Chuck DeVore - TPPF Joins Houston Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Project twenty twenty five. It's been vilified by the left.
You would think it was written by racist indanderthals, maybe
both to hear the left describe it, I don't believe
it's that way to begin with. President Trump distanced himself
from it at the very beginning, by the way he's
put together by some folks at the Heritage Foundation, truck
Devor joins US Texas Public Policy Foundation. Let's start with

(00:23):
this misconception that Trump supports Project twenty twenty five. He
never came out and supported Project twenty twenty five, did he?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
No, No, he didn't. And in fact, this was a
think tank project. It was a cooperative thing tank project.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation had several individuals that participated.
I contributed to the Defense section, the portion about the
Department of Defense, since I had a chance to work
there under President Reagan when I was a very very
young man, as a special assistant for Foreign Affairs. But

(00:54):
this is a very common thing. The left does it.
For example, every cycle you have the Center for Americans,
the progressive left wing think tank. They put one of
these things together every four years, and if a Democrat wins,
they'll probably take a few of the ideas from the
left wing version of this. So this has been used

(01:15):
as a campaign ploy. I was in Congress yesterday testifying
before the Oversight Committee. Every single Democrat in their opening
statement talked about Project twenty twenty five, even though I
had nothing to do with the content of the hearing,
which was how Biden Harris' government overspending and regulation has
caused the economy not to do great as sparked inflation.

(01:39):
But they have no answer to for that. So what
they do is they go Project twenty twenty five, Project
twenty twenty five. It was like a broken record.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
The think tanks do what think tanks do. They put
out papers, but democrats do what democrats do. They use it.
Everything becomes political and is anti Donald J. Trump. He
may not have endorsed the plan, he said he hasn't
read it, but it doesn't mean that he's against Project
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, the bottom line is if Trump wins the election,
he's got his own agenda, and some of that agenda
may include some aspects of what we wrote. It's a
helpful exercise to put your thoughts and your ideas, your reforms,
your innovations, the things you're going to do to try
to improve federal governance. Get them down on a piece

(02:26):
of paper in a discipline fashion. When things are kind
of calm and cool prior to a new administration taking office,
and then the new administration has a menu, they can say, well, gee,
I like this this, and I don't much like that,
and so let's go and implement a few of these things.
So it's a blueprint, clearly, relieve it.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Clearly, Chuck, the left is afraid of it. What do
you think is in there that they're so afraid of.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, I'm not so certain that that's the main thing.
As to they don't have anything good to talk about
with regards the economy. So, for example, yesterday during the testimony,
one of the people testifying, I think from the Center
for American Progress, by the way, was talking about he
used the statistic about how payroll has grown twenty seven

(03:13):
percent since inauguration day and inflation's only up twenty percent.
And it took me three times looking at his claim
to try to understand what he was saying, and because
it first looked great, and then I realized what he
was talking about was overall payroll. He wasn't tying about
how much people are getting paid on average. He was
tying about basically how many people are getting paid and

(03:35):
working as we recovered from COVID. And the problem is
is you actually look at wages, real wages, and you
factor in inflation, people are making less money than they
were at the beginning of COVID. And a lot of
those people who are getting paid now are people who
are in the nation illegally, because the majority of jobs

(03:56):
since the recovery, or you know, since the inauguration day
have gotten to people in this country illegally, some legally,
but mostly illegally. So when you're talking points, you're weak
because reality doesn't match what you want to talk about.
You're gonna divert. You're gonna say, look at the shiny
object over here, look at project, and then the compliant

(04:17):
major media is going to go right along and help
reinforce your narrative.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
That's the beauty of statistics, isn't it. Chuck, thanks for
joining us, Do you appreciate it? From the Texas Public
Policy Foundation, Chuck Devor