Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're just joining us, you missed some audio that
I just played one from Congressman Thomas Massey predicting back
in November that we would be sitting at the end
of December with a giant crap sandwich as a continuing resolution,
and he was absolutely right. And joining me now to
talk about the crap sandwich, although he may call it
something different. Kurt Couchman, he is a senior fellow in
(00:22):
Fiscal Policy for Americans for Prosperity, and he looks for
innovative solutions to federal and state budget challenges. How about
Congress being the problem with our federal budget problems.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Kurt, Congress is absolutely the core of our federal budget problems.
I'm calling the still of the cr isthmus bus or
the Christmas Boss. Oh nice, but yeah, it's not. It's
not the way that Congress should be legislating. You know,
the appropriations bills, which fund which which are collectively a
(00:55):
quarter of federal spending and none of the revenue. Those
are supposed to be done in August with YESCR, they
won't be done until at the earliest March, mid March sometime,
so agencies will have half of a fiscal year to
carry out their stuff with normal appropriations maybe, and there's
all this extraneous stuff that I'm sure some of it
(01:17):
is fine. Some of them might not be, but some
of it's fine. That's just sort of stuck in there
based on what the chairs and ranking members of the
different authorizing committees. So yeah, we were probably with that
being in there, But like, why isn't there an authorizing
process that lets them bring this stuff to the floor
as routine business and get Congress to vote on and
all that. It's such a mess and Congress really doesn't
(01:37):
need to fix the system.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Well, I mean, Kurt, I mean you kind of you
know the answer to the question of why we can't
do the bills the right way? With these omnibus bills
or these giant continuous resolutions. They do stuff them full
of all the crap sandwich stuff so they can slide
it through on a mus pass bill. And now we've
got this is my frustration. We talked yesterday about some
polling that was post election polling about voters voted the
(02:00):
way they did, and they voted the way they did
because they perceived Trump to be a more effective leader
and therefore would have a more effective government. But the
reality is neither Republicans nor Democrats have shown any real
backbone when it comes to tackling deficit spending. So what
has to happen here?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh, there's so much that has to be done. I mean,
I wrote a piece back in January twenty seventeen when
President Trump first took office talking about how he can
help make Congress responsible again, and none of those things
got fixed, unfortunately, and so there's still a lot of
work that needs to be done. I'm actually pretty excited
about this Elon musk devek Ramaswami Doze the Department of
(02:43):
Government Efficiency, even though it's early governmental commission, because it's
just the constant drum meat that there's all this stuff
that the the federal government has no business doing, that
it does wastefully, that it does inefficiently, and for that
to be just hanging over the heads of everyone for
the next well however long it last year and a half,
at least, that will help with discipline Congress and helping
(03:06):
them make the tough but necessary decisions. There's a lot
more that needs to be done, but that I think
could be a really powerful messaging framework for people to
be thinking about things.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Under I heard a pundit kind of poo pooing the
notion of dog's effectiveness. But we're in kind of uncharted
territory with Elon Musk and vivike Ramaswami and social media.
We have never been able to directly vent our spleens
in the fashion that we're now seeing on X and
(03:36):
other social media platforms. And for Elon Musk and vivike
Ramaswami to be heading this up and they're already dripping
stuff out on the daily on X dot com, this
is a whole new This is a big difference than
what we've seen before. I'm kind of hopeful that that
kind of pressure that you're talking about where people are
going to look at their Congress people and say, what
are you doing? Because now they're more informed because of DOJ.
(03:58):
But Congress loves to protect its own power to spend,
and I am not hopeful that that is going to
be enough. I mean, I hope it is, but I
don't know. I mean, if we continue to go like this,
how much longer can we sustain this?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah? I mean people are worried about the fiscal crisis.
Former Congressman Jeff Penclin had a peace in the Wall
Street Journal just today talking about how, you know, we
can't keep borrowing like we are, and so we're going
to have to cut spending in order to you know,
keep the bond markets happy. So that's absolutely true. The
thing about the Doge and the broader Trump administration's focus
(04:35):
on the wasteful spending and the spending that is not
just wasteful but like actively harmful to the American people
and getting all that out of people's way is that
it's a big megaphone. And yes, it's truth that the
Doge won't have a lot of formal power. They can
come up with ideas and then promote them within the
administration with Congress, but it's that extension of the bully
(04:55):
pulpit that they'll have on task they're dogged. It could
be something that will create more space for Congress to
actually put in place the processes that will help them
fix things in the long run. So we need to
be looking at this in a whole lot of different ways.
Do the tax extensions, cut spending, cut regulations fix the system?
These are all things that are possible for Congress to
(05:17):
do in the next year, year and a half.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But I think the frustration is is that I gotta
somebody just hit me up on Twitter and said, Kurt,
where did the seer come from? Who wrote it? And
I think people are starting to ask that question, where
did it come from? It didn't just get birthed, you
know yesterday somebody had had a say in this.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's about a dozen members of Congress and the White House,
and that means that four hundred and no, oh sorry,
five hundred and thirty five members minus those twelve were
barely involved, if at all. I mean, that's one of
the things that gets people like Thomas Matthews so upset
is that they have ideas, they have perspectives, they have values,
they had they represent seven hundred and fifty thousand people
(05:56):
each of them in the House and then depending on
the Senate. But they don't have a seat at the
table and crafting which policies actually advance, and they don't
have an opportunity to make them better or like weed
out nonsense. So they're there, but they're not really able
to act as legislators, and that's the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Why is that, I mean, is it because Speaker Johnson
is too willing to do the CRS or which I'm
more mad at the Republicans on this stuff than I
am the Democrats, because at least the Democrats are honest
about wanting the government right, Like why can't my Johnson
get this done? Why can't they do twelve separate bills?
Why are we still doing this again?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, the centers and the system are bad. I mean
the I think that the leadership has done as good
of a job as it is possible with this system,
but that just tells you how bad it is. Like
all the committees should be managing their stuff every single year,
not just the appropriate. There shouldn't even be shut downs,
don't They don't. They'll only started happening because of the
Jimmy Carter administration, and it creates all the wrong incentives.
(07:02):
It encourages leadership to wait until the last minute and
then jam everybody with it, Whereas if you didn't have shutdowns,
you'd actually have to earn the votes for the new
bills instead of forcing them on people right before a
holiday deadline.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And that's exactly what they're doing. So, I mean, they're
obviously this bill is going to pass. I mean, there's
all just a zero percent chance it's not going to pass.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Correct, Oh, I guess we'll see. I've seen some reporting
by Chad Pergram at Fox News that Republicans are having
a hard time, you know, being sure that they're going
to have the votes. So we'll see what happens. It's
already a left leaning package, probably just because that's where
the votes are. They had to make a bunch of
concessions to Democrats because there are enough Republicans that will
(07:43):
refuse to vote for any sort of cr appropriations bill.
And then Elon Musk has been out there talking about
how it's so bad. So I think it remains to
be seen what will pass. It might be this large bill,
or it might have to be something scaled back. But
I don't think it's certain right now what will happen.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
From your lips to God's ears, Kurt Couchman, he is
with Americans for prosperity. You are more optimistic than I am.
I really, you feel more optimistic to me than I am.
I am at the point now, I've been screaming about,
you know, the deficit and debt spending, and how people
basically say, no, it's no big deal. It is a
huge deal, And I just knowing history, I'd hate to
(08:28):
see us become the next victim of our own hubris
in thinking that we can't spend ourselves into oblivion.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
We absolutely can send ourselves into oblivion, and I hope
we don't find that out. If we do, though, we
need to make sure that the least bad way of
sorting that back out is possible. So, you know, I
am optimistic, at least in the long run, because America
is an incredible place for generating ideas, and you know,
free speech is one of the greatest blessings we have.
(08:58):
So I'm hopeful that people can get the word out
and we can figure out how to fix these things
and move forward. But it's going to take a lot
of work, and there's a lot of risks and a
lot of dangers along the way.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Kurt Jasman, I appreciate your time today.
If you're just joining us, you missed some audio that
I just played one from Congressman Thomas Massey predicting back
in November that we would be sitting at the end
of December with a giant crap sandwich as a continuing resolution,
and he was absolutely right. And joining me now to
talk about the crap sandwich, although he may call it
something different. Kurt Couchman, he is a senior fellow in
(00:22):
Fiscal Policy for Americans for Prosperity, and he looks for
innovative solutions to federal and state budget challenges. How about
Congress being the problem with our federal budget problems.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Kurt, Congress is absolutely the core of our federal budget problems.
I'm calling the still of the cr isthmus bus or
the Christmas Boss. Oh nice, but yeah, it's not. It's
not the way that Congress should be legislating. You know,
the appropriations bills, which fund which which are collectively a
(00:55):
quarter of federal spending and none of the revenue. Those
are supposed to be done in August with YESCR, they
won't be done until at the earliest March, mid March sometime,
so agencies will have half of a fiscal year to
carry out their stuff with normal appropriations maybe, and there's
all this extraneous stuff that I'm sure some of it
(01:17):
is fine. Some of them might not be, but some
of it's fine. That's just sort of stuck in there
based on what the chairs and ranking members of the
different authorizing committees. So yeah, we were probably with that
being in there, But like, why isn't there an authorizing
process that lets them bring this stuff to the floor
as routine business and get Congress to vote on and
all that. It's such a mess and Congress really doesn't
(01:37):
need to fix the system.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Well, I mean, Kurt, I mean you kind of you
know the answer to the question of why we can't
do the bills the right way? With these omnibus bills
or these giant continuous resolutions. They do stuff them full
of all the crap sandwich stuff so they can slide
it through on a mus pass bill. And now we've
got this is my frustration. We talked yesterday about some
polling that was post election polling about voters voted the
(02:00):
way they did, and they voted the way they did
because they perceived Trump to be a more effective leader
and therefore would have a more effective government. But the
reality is neither Republicans nor Democrats have shown any real
backbone when it comes to tackling deficit spending. So what
has to happen here?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh, there's so much that has to be done. I mean,
I wrote a piece back in January twenty seventeen when
President Trump first took office talking about how he can
help make Congress responsible again, and none of those things
got fixed, unfortunately, and so there's still a lot of
work that needs to be done. I'm actually pretty excited
about this Elon musk devek Ramaswami Doze the Department of
(02:43):
Government Efficiency, even though it's early governmental commission, because it's
just the constant drum meat that there's all this stuff
that the the federal government has no business doing, that
it does wastefully, that it does inefficiently, and for that
to be just hanging over the heads of everyone for
the next well however long it last year and a half,
at least, that will help with discipline Congress and helping
(03:06):
them make the tough but necessary decisions. There's a lot
more that needs to be done, but that I think
could be a really powerful messaging framework for people to
be thinking about things.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Under I heard a pundit kind of poo pooing the
notion of dog's effectiveness. But we're in kind of uncharted
territory with Elon Musk and vivike Ramaswami and social media.
We have never been able to directly vent our spleens
in the fashion that we're now seeing on X and
(03:36):
other social media platforms. And for Elon Musk and vivike
Ramaswami to be heading this up and they're already dripping
stuff out on the daily on X dot com, this
is a whole new This is a big difference than
what we've seen before. I'm kind of hopeful that that
kind of pressure that you're talking about where people are
going to look at their Congress people and say, what
are you doing? Because now they're more informed because of DOJ.
(03:58):
But Congress loves to protect its own power to spend,
and I am not hopeful that that is going to
be enough. I mean, I hope it is, but I
don't know. I mean, if we continue to go like this,
how much longer can we sustain this?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah? I mean people are worried about the fiscal crisis.
Former Congressman Jeff Penclin had a peace in the Wall
Street Journal just today talking about how, you know, we
can't keep borrowing like we are, and so we're going
to have to cut spending in order to you know,
keep the bond markets happy. So that's absolutely true. The
thing about the Doge and the broader Trump administration's focus
(04:35):
on the wasteful spending and the spending that is not
just wasteful but like actively harmful to the American people
and getting all that out of people's way is that
it's a big megaphone. And yes, it's truth that the
Doge won't have a lot of formal power. They can
come up with ideas and then promote them within the
administration with Congress, but it's that extension of the bully
(04:55):
pulpit that they'll have on task they're dogged. It could
be something that will create more space for Congress to
actually put in place the processes that will help them
fix things in the long run. So we need to
be looking at this in a whole lot of different ways.
Do the tax extensions, cut spending, cut regulations fix the system?
These are all things that are possible for Congress to
(05:17):
do in the next year, year and a half.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But I think the frustration is is that I gotta
somebody just hit me up on Twitter and said, Kurt,
where did the seer come from? Who wrote it? And
I think people are starting to ask that question, where
did it come from? It didn't just get birthed, you
know yesterday somebody had had a say in this.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's about a dozen members of Congress and the White House,
and that means that four hundred and no, oh sorry,
five hundred and thirty five members minus those twelve were
barely involved, if at all. I mean, that's one of
the things that gets people like Thomas Matthews so upset
is that they have ideas, they have perspectives, they have values,
they had they represent seven hundred and fifty thousand people
(05:56):
each of them in the House and then depending on
the Senate. But they don't have a seat at the
table and crafting which policies actually advance, and they don't
have an opportunity to make them better or like weed
out nonsense. So they're there, but they're not really able
to act as legislators, and that's the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Why is that, I mean, is it because Speaker Johnson
is too willing to do the CRS or which I'm
more mad at the Republicans on this stuff than I
am the Democrats, because at least the Democrats are honest
about wanting the government right, Like why can't my Johnson
get this done? Why can't they do twelve separate bills?
Why are we still doing this again?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, the centers and the system are bad. I mean
the I think that the leadership has done as good
of a job as it is possible with this system,
but that just tells you how bad it is. Like
all the committees should be managing their stuff every single year,
not just the appropriate. There shouldn't even be shut downs,
don't They don't. They'll only started happening because of the
Jimmy Carter administration, and it creates all the wrong incentives.
(07:02):
It encourages leadership to wait until the last minute and
then jam everybody with it, Whereas if you didn't have shutdowns,
you'd actually have to earn the votes for the new
bills instead of forcing them on people right before a
holiday deadline.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And that's exactly what they're doing. So, I mean, they're
obviously this bill is going to pass. I mean, there's
all just a zero percent chance it's not going to pass.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Correct, Oh, I guess we'll see. I've seen some reporting
by Chad Pergram at Fox News that Republicans are having
a hard time, you know, being sure that they're going
to have the votes. So we'll see what happens. It's
already a left leaning package, probably just because that's where
the votes are. They had to make a bunch of
concessions to Democrats because there are enough Republicans that will
(07:43):
refuse to vote for any sort of cr appropriations bill.
And then Elon Musk has been out there talking about
how it's so bad. So I think it remains to
be seen what will pass. It might be this large bill,
or it might have to be something scaled back. But
I don't think it's certain right now what will happen.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
From your lips to God's ears, Kurt Couchman, he is
with Americans for prosperity. You are more optimistic than I am.
I really, you feel more optimistic to me than I am.
I am at the point now, I've been screaming about,
you know, the deficit and debt spending, and how people
basically say, no, it's no big deal. It is a
huge deal, And I just knowing history, I'd hate to
(08:28):
see us become the next victim of our own hubris
in thinking that we can't spend ourselves into oblivion.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
We absolutely can send ourselves into oblivion, and I hope
we don't find that out. If we do, though, we
need to make sure that the least bad way of
sorting that back out is possible. So, you know, I
am optimistic, at least in the long run, because America
is an incredible place for generating ideas, and you know,
free speech is one of the greatest blessings we have.
(08:58):
So I'm hopeful that people can get the word out
and we can figure out how to fix these things
and move forward. But it's going to take a lot
of work, and there's a lot of risks and a
lot of dangers along the way.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Kurt Jasman, I appreciate your time today.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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