12-20-24 - 8am - It Will Take Time

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, you're the one with the cranial Rexellen version. When
it comes to the debt ceiling. This should be used
as a negotiating tool by Republicans when it comes up
to get more cuts in our budget. Plus, it should
be a clean cr no additions, no other hanky panky.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I understand where you're coming from, but I can't emphasize
enough that if you want to see the United States
of America, now, let me back up, We've got to
cut government spending. It has to be done. But in

(00:45):
order to cut government spending, it's going to be a
combination of literally cutting some spending and eliminating some things
some programs. There's some I was reading an analysis yesterday.
I forget the number of programs, but there they were

(01:09):
referred to as dead programs that they're not doing anything.
They're they're literally non functioning, but they still cost US
five hundred billion dollars a year, half a trillion dollars. Well,
there's a great way to just eliminate those, but all

(01:34):
of those have constituencies, So all of those are going
to be fights, all gonna be battles for doing either
duplicative programs, non existent programs, they're dead programs. They're not
that whatever they were originally intended to do, they're not
really doing. In fact, TSA is one of the ones
I'm going to talk about next that is an example
of a dead program that we're spending all this money

(01:56):
on tax dollars on that the cost of the TSA
should not be born by taxpayers, but instead should be
born by the traveling public, the airlines. And I'll get
to that in a minute. But the reality is this
about the debt sealing it took us. I'm trying to

(02:22):
calculate now. I would say, since you could, probably you
might argue go back to FDR. But I really think
that the bloated government started in nineteen sixty four with
Lbj's War on Poverty and the Great Society. And that's

(02:43):
when if you look at our debt, that's when the
debt began to balloon. And every president, Republican and Democrat,
has increased the debt, and that debt will continue to increase,
just as it has taken us sixty four almost you know,
said getting close to seven decades. Go back to FDR.

(03:07):
Obviously even longer than that. It's taking us you know,
almost one hundred years to get to where we are today.
You are not going to in one congress get rid
of that. That's that's living in law lah Land. If

(03:28):
you think that's going to happen, you're going to You're
going to have to do it incrementally. That's the reality
of life. If you allow this nation to default. This country,

(03:48):
this one country right now is the only and is
the last, in my opinion, the only and the last
beacon of hope for freedom to exist on this planet.
And if we go, the world goes, because it'll be
a domino effect. You look at what's happening in Europe

(04:10):
right now. Europe's falling apart. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy,
they're all they're all in the crapper. Canada the same thing. Trudeau's.
Maybe Trudeau will be out, you know by the end
of the year, but Trudeau needs to go. Canada just
get they understand that. You know, their socialized medicine, all
of their welfare programs, none of that is working. But

(04:35):
you have to wean people off it. If you go
the other route and you just first of all, it's
politically not realistic, that's just not going to happen. And
by that, I mean you're not just going to suddenly
put together a budget that is completely balanced. It's just possible,

(04:57):
impossible without raising taxes exorbitantly to where now all of
us are going to go broke because our tax bill
has double, triple, quadruple, and you can't afford it. I
can't afford it. You can't afford it. The majority of
Americans who work for a paycheck cannot afford that. So

(05:19):
you have to work over time to start needling that
down little by little. Part of the reason for that
is that too many Americans are addicted to government spending,
not just the politicians, but the recipients of all those
federal dollars. So you have to work your way back

(05:43):
to a balanced budget. Now you can do that with cuts,
but you can also do that with growth. And if
you start reducing taxes, which does I don't care what
people say about Laugher, it is true. You reduce taxes,
you increase revenues, and you create more jobs, you create
more taxpayer do you create more revenues? So when you

(06:06):
start growing the economy, do you increase revenues which allows
you to start I know this seems odd to you,
but allows you to It's easier to cut when you
have growth. We don't have any growth, so as it's
taken us. I'm going to use Dragon, he's sitting here.

(06:31):
I'm gonna use Dragon as an example. Dragon, when you
first started working a subway? How much did you weigh?
How much did I weigh? Yeah? What do you think
you weighed? Were you overweight at that time?

Speaker 3 (06:40):
I've been I was overweight my entire life.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Oh, your entire life? Oh yeah, okay, So for Dragon,
for Dragon's entire life, he's been obese. Yeah, how long
has it taken you to where you are today?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
I lost one hundred pounds in six months, one hundred
and fifty in a year.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
So it's taken you twelve months to get rid of
all of that that occurred before. Yeah, and you're still
working on it. Correct every day, every single day he
works on every single day. He posts on Instagram and
threads and everywhere else. He posts all of his data
about what he's doing, and including videos.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
What I'm doing is a bit of anomaly too. I'm
not sure that the average, the average teddy bear could
do the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Right. In fact, I was surprised that it was that fast.
I thought it had taken you longer than that, so
I should have picked a better example. You can obese
your entire life. Most people are going to spend several
years getting back to a normal weight. Well, we're gonna
have to do that too, So you take your wins
where you can get it. Increasing the debt or eliminating

(07:46):
the debt ceiling, which is just a fiction, it's just
a political fiction. If we default, if we bump up
against the debt ceiling, and then we don't pay those trailuries,
we don't as they mature. If we don't pay the
people for the principal and interests they've earned on those treasuries,

(08:09):
capital will just fly out of this country and it'll
be worldwide. In fact, my prediction is it would create a
worldwide depression. And as we go into a worldwide depression,
you're likely to enter into a world war. At the
same time that we're entering a depression and entering into

(08:30):
a world war. Our enemies, China in particular, that has
built up a navy much larger than ours, has many
more men, and has all their proxies North Korea. I
would even consider Russia to be a proxy of China
at this point. Vladimir Putin may not like that, but
he really has become a proxy of China. Chinas and

(08:53):
the Chinese Communist Party suddenly becomes the dominant force. And
now we live not in the world order. We live
in the communist Chinese world order. That's the result of
our default, capital flight and a destruction of individual liberty
and freedom in this country. The economy and our ability

(09:18):
to continue to grow is critical to maintaining the world order.
So to work our way out of this, we have
to have a combination of spending cuts. There'll be some
deficit spending, but reduced deficit spending. You can't just go
from a trillion dollars to no to a balanced budget.

(09:41):
You simply can't do that in one cycle. It's going
to take time. Trump doesn't want and Trump's brilliant about this.
Trump doesn't want to have that fight during his tenure
because he wants to get us fiscally and in terms
of monetary policy back on the right track. And that's
going to take time. And so for all the chip

(10:01):
Roys and all the Thomas Massy's, as much as I
love the fact they want to fix things, you cannot
do it overnight. That's the reality. Now I live in
the real world. You might live in an imaginary world
where you just say, just cut everything, and by golly,
we're just gonna just well, you can't. You simply cannot
do it, because if you're going to cut everything, then

(10:26):
you do have to cut Grandma social Security, and you've
got to cut her Medicaid, and you've got to cut
her Medicare, and you've got to cut you've got to
cut the TSA, you've got to cut the military, you've
got to cut everything. But you don't want to do
that one giant chunk. You want to fix medicare, or

(10:47):
you want to fix social Security by changing the program.
Now you change the program by those who are on it,
let them stay on it. But those that are coming in,
you've got to find a new program for them. Or
basically say, you know what, if you're under the age
of thirty five, you're on your own, or twenty five
or fifty five, whatever the numbers. I don't care, but

(11:08):
figure out what's politically acceptable what you can sell, and
just say, you know what, for your retirement, you're on
your own, which is what I truly believe it should be.
That takes a lot of political capital. And if you're
arguing about a debt ceiling, you're horse trading with an
opposition party that you must never forget. The opposition party

(11:32):
in this country is Marxist Democrats. They are part and
parcel of the Communist party. That's what Marxism leads to,
and that's what they're headed toward. That's the fundamental transformation
of this country. So yes, I get real out of
it about this stuff because people live in a fantasy

(11:54):
land where they think that five hundred and thirty five
members from all across the country is suddenly going to say, Oh,
we're just gonna slash the budget and we're gonna eliminate
two trillion dollars, or we're gonna eliminate more than two
trillion dollars. We're gonna get blow our spending levels, and
we're gonna have a balanced budget, and suddenly it's gonna No,
it's not gonna fix anything at all, because it's not

(12:14):
going to happen unless you can elect in deep blue
states all conservative Republicans. The change is going to take time.
And if you can't get that through your thick skull.
You're living in a fantasy world. Do I wish that

(12:35):
we could fix it overnight? Damn right, I wish we could,
But I live in Realville, and I know it's not
going to happen. So this CR. Look, Mike Johnson made
a huge mistake, huge mistake by putting together a fifteen
hundred page CR when you could have simply done the

(12:57):
second CR initially funded the disasters, put in for the
current level of spending through March when they finally have
majorities in both houses, eliminated the debt sealing. So Trump
does have to fight that battle and make concessions to
the Democrats, Like, why does he have to do that

(13:19):
because we have a majority. You know what the majority's
going to be in the House, maybe four or five descend,
it's a little better. So you got somebody that has
a heart attack and is gone, they can't vote, so
you're not gonna get You're gonna have to have Democrat
votes to get stuff done. So take advantage of the

(13:41):
fact that some of these Democrats that are the conservative
Democrat and there are one or two of them, or
there are Democrats who live in swing states. Take advantage
of them and get what you can right now and
then work for more later when you've got when you've
got majorities in both houses. That's folks that the reality don't.

(14:02):
Let don't don't listen to all of the talking heads
that go out and pound their chest about I want
to balance budget tomorrow. It's not gonna happen. It can't
happen unless you somehow put a gun, I mean literally,
put a gun to every head of every Democrat and
say vote for this or we're gonna blow your brains out.

(14:23):
And even then some are such ideologues they're willing to
die for their Marxism, so they won't vote for it.
And you're right back to square one. Good grief. Just
get into the real world, now, do you think. Let
me give you an example. We get we whether that

(14:45):
number of one hundred billion dollars for disaster relief is
reasonable or not. Let's just assume for a moment that
it is real. Do you think for a minute, And
this is what I despise about what we've done with FEMA.
FEMA has become a first responder. FEMA has become a
cookie jar for state governments to dip into whenever there's

(15:08):
something that happens in their community, a snowstorm, a blizzard,
a flood, a hurricane, or whatever. They just expect the
federal government to fly in and just take take chinnooks
and just dump buckets of money on them. Not just governments,
but individuals too. That's going to take time to wean

(15:31):
people off that. I don't know what else to say.
I've talked myself out of There's nothing else to say
except that it's just not realistic. And if you want
Trump to succeed, if you want Trump to be able

(15:55):
to start on the path, you know, Bill Clinton won
a balanced budget. He didn't in his first two years.
He had to start working with a Congress that happened
to be a Republican Congress, the Contract with America where
there was actually sincere legitimate negotiations going on, actual horse
trading going on. That got us to a balanced budget.

(16:17):
It took him several years to do that. I don't
think it wasn't until the second term he got it.
You can't really argue that Trump's in a second term.
Trump's in the first term of the new Trump and
so he's got four years. And so during those four years,
he simply said take the debt ceiling off the table,

(16:38):
so that I don't have to negotiate with Democrats and
give them to concessions in order to increase the debt,
because you will have to increase the debt at the
same time that you're trying to reduce spending, because just
even if he had just have one or two percent inflation,
the costag just doing business will go up. I I

(17:09):
don't I don't have better explain it other than if
you want to see what, go study your history when
or look at Great Britain right now. I always use
Great Britain because I've been there some much, or just
the continent in general. We don't know how influential this

(17:35):
country is. We're the strongest economy of the entire world.
We're the largest economy in the entire world. And if
we default, if we go, if we default from treasuries,
that capital escapes and goes somewhere else. Michael, it's called
moving the Overton window.

Speaker 4 (17:54):
I don't know if anybody studied political philosophy, but you
can't just shove the window up.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Words are downwards to your desired area. You've got to
work at it. That's why it's sliding me upward or
sliding the Overton window downward. You got to do it
in incrementalism.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
That's how we got here.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Olverton's window, Hawkins Razor. I mean all, I mean slightly different,
but all generally the same thing. And it's generally incrementalism.
So I get this, and I wanted to move on,
but I now I well, I'm choosing not to ignore
this email because it gives me a chance to, I think,

(18:35):
help you understand what's going on inside the Beltway. So
let's back up and think about what happened yesterday. So
yesterday you had we had two different continuing resolutions. The
first one, the first defeat, was the fifteen hundred page bill.

(18:58):
That's the one that included all of the port everything.
It was a well, first, let's define a continuing resolution.
Maybe people don't understand that a continuing resolution, a clean
continuing resolution, is a resolution that just says to every

(19:21):
department and agency last year, your budget was one hundred dollars.
Your budget between the passage of this and now, let's say,
let me make it ease on my in my head,
your budget was one hundred and twenty dollars. All right,

(19:42):
So your budget in this continuing continuing resolution is one
hundred and twenty dollars divided by twelve, which is ten
dollars a month. So you're this continuing resolution is ten
dollars a month for the months of January, February, and March.

(20:06):
So it's just a continuation of the pre existing funding
levels through the end of March. That's what a continuing
resolution is. That's all it does. It just says you're authorized,
we're appropriating, authorizing and appropriating the same level of funding

(20:28):
that you've had before for the next three months. And
if it was one hundred and twenty dollars ten dollars
a month, you're getting ten dollars a month. Every department
and agency, whatever your yours is, you get that same
amount for the months of January, February, and March. All right, Oh,
that's why it was. That's why it was from the
twenty fifth, I think through the twenty fifth, So it's

(20:49):
not exactly you know, the first of the month, that's
a CLEI, that's a CR. So what happened was you
get a CR that becomes what they euphemistically refer to
as a Christmas tree, and that Christmas tree says okay,
funding is continued as is for the next three months.

(21:12):
But in addition to that, we're going to give ourselves
a raise, We're going to increase our health benefits. We're
going to add in one hundred billion dollars for a disaster.
We're going to add in this pork project, that pork project,
another pork project, every little thing that different little senators
and congressman want, we're going to add that in. So

(21:33):
everybody looks at that, and Musk and Ramaswami and Trump
look at it and they say no. And that cause
that's no, we're you do that. You're going against my wishes.
And I've been elected to lead this country onto a
fiscal sound policy. So and everybody scrambles, and you hear

(21:55):
the left start talking about President Musk. They're trying to
divert you from the issue. You the issue was all
of the pork added into it, and that got defeated.
So then they took it out. They took everything out
except this. And now I want to read the email

(22:15):
that's causing me to continue with this. So Greg writes,
Greg lives out in Missouri. Greg writes, tell us, Michael,
why is this such a radical idea? That you can't
get behind looks very reasonable to me. And it's a
tweet from Thomas Massey at five to eleven yesterday, which

(22:38):
is before the bill, or is just after the first
CR failed, but before the second one came up, for
which Massey also voted no. So at five to eleven
Eastern yesterday, Thomas Massey tweeted this quote. This isn't complicated.

(23:02):
Separate the bills and vote on them individually. One vote
on the clean CR, one vote on the debt limit,
one vote on disaster relief, one vote on farm bailouts.
Radical right. He writes individual bills for each issue. Let
me tell you why I can't get behind that. Thomas

(23:26):
Massey is smart. I love Thomas Massey, but he's conflating
twelve separate appropriations bills, which is what we should have
every single year to create a budget. With creating separate
bills in a CR, thinking that, well, let's just vote

(23:47):
on each of these things separately. Here's why that won't work.
Because if you want, if you really want a clean CR,
and you really do agree that we ought to increase
or just eliminate the debt limit at least for the
next four years, if you really do believe that we

(24:10):
ought to have one hundred billion dollars for disaster relief.
And if you really do believe that you want farm bailouts,
people are going to look at the calendar, because these
bills will appear on the calendar in the House and
they'll look at them and they'll say, well, yeah, I
could vote on a clean CR, but I'm against the

(24:32):
debt limit. Or I could vote on the CR and
the debt limit, but I think the disaster relief is
too much. Or you could have somebody that says, I
love farm bailouts, but I'm against that debt limit. So
now you run the risk that nothing's going to pass

(24:54):
once again because people are looking at individual votes, but
they see on the calendar that they're going to have
to vote on these one, two, three, four, five, on
these five separate issues, and they may be for some
of those five and against some of the other fives
because they know that in their district if they vote.

(25:18):
For example, I come from farm country. I think we
eliminate farm bailouts. But I know that we can't do
that just bammed completely. We can't just say to farmers
and ranchers across the country that you know what, starting
this this fiscal year, or not this fiscal year, but
this calendar year, no more bailouts for you, No more

(25:40):
crop subsidies, no more crop insurance. Now you know nothing else,
it's done. We're not gonna subsidize anything. They would destroy
the farm economy. You've got to measuredly get rid of
it over time so that the private sector can adjust
to it. So I might vote against even though I'm
opposed to farm bailouts. I would vote against that, even

(26:03):
though it's a separate bill. So people are in. What's
going to happen based on Thomas's idea here is that
none of them will get the two thirds. Now why
is the two thirds? Why can't we just have, you know,
a simple majority, Because to vote on those bills separately

(26:26):
means you have to go back to the rules committee.
We're up against the deadline here, which again I fought
Mike Johnson for this. We should have done this a
long time ago, where you would have had time to
go to the rules committee. But because you're not going
to the rules committee, you just can't have the Rules
committee because they don't have anything to do with it.
They could set the parameters for the vote. In other words,

(26:48):
they could say, for each of these bills, just a
simple majority to pass them. So you need I never
can remember what's four thirty five divided by two orn
my calculator, So for thirty five divided by two, so
you need two hundred and eighteen. I know, I can't

(27:08):
keep that number in my head. So you need two
inner and eighteen votes to pass each of those bills.
You won't get too under eighteen to pass each of
those bills because some are for some and some are
against others, So then everything fails. But if you put
them all together, now those who may be against farm
bailouts might be willing to vote for it because they're

(27:31):
getting something else that they want. That's how the legislative
process works. Now, let's take Thomas Massey's idea here, Greg,
and let's put it in the real world. In the
real world, the speaker would have started a long time
ago and said to each of the twelve appropriations committees,

(27:53):
get your budgets together, because we're going to vote on those.
And now, because of the reality of where we are
on the calendar, we're gonna vote on those in the summer.
So that when it comes the fiscal year in October,
we've got twelve separate appropriations bills passed that had been debated,

(28:17):
that had been argued, trimmed, added, whatever. And so now
you can vote on twelve separate appropriations bills and not
run the risk of shutting down the entire government, which frankly,
I don't give a rat sass about shut it down,
because you know what the reality is about shutting down
the government. It doesn't shut down. The military keeps working,

(28:37):
The military keeps getting paid ATC keeps planes flying in
the air, and they still get paid. But some bureau
counts won't get paid, and they'll have to take out
loans so that they can pay their bills between now
and when they finally come back and give them their
back pay. So this is all just a charade, and

(29:00):
it's squarely on the fault of Mike Johnson, and for
that matter, I shouldn't say just Mike Johnson, but the
entire House leadership, including Steve Scalise and some of the
others that I think are really good people, for not
putting their freaking act together and putting out that first
CR in the first place. Because now every in you

(29:23):
what's going on now again dealing with reality. Democrats know
now that the Republicans are dysfunctional once again. So what
are they gonna do. I'm gonna do a damn thing
they wanted to shut down because they want to be
able to and whether it's legitimate or not, is im material.

(29:45):
They will go to the cabal, and the cabal will
start talking about how Republicans are shutting down government, and
you know, Grandma, they're gonna put the fear and Grandma,
you're not gonna give your Social Security check next month,
and Grandma's gonna be scared to death and she's gonna
start blaming Republicans and bec a political issue that's going
to cost us in the next election. That's the reality.

(30:06):
Deal with it, Michael, Michael.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
We cannot afford to have our government shut down. I've
been trying to get to the post office for two weeks,
but the line's been around the building. So I took
today off, got their fifteen minutes before they open, stood
in line for an hour and a half, and when
I got to the counter, they couldn't find my package.

(30:30):
So we need these government programs to work.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
I love it. CNN is reporting I haven't found it
online yet. But see how they just had on the
Cairn that Trump said, fine, just shut the government down,
Just go and shut it down. Now, if that's what
he wants, then let him have it, Let him have it.

(30:58):
I just don't care about the government.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Then it goes as a set down under the Biden administration,
So of course, why wouldn't want it to be shut
down right now?

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Right? So let it be shut down the Biden administration.
But still we remember the reality is the kabal will
still blame the Republicans whether and not only will the
kabal still blame Republicans, but there are too many useful
idiots out there that will believe whatever the cabal says.
So that's why I would have avoided a shutdown. But

(31:27):
if Trump wants to try to shift the blame over
to the Democrats, then let him do it.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Wait, you mean it's not the Republican's fault.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
In this case, I would actually say it is the
Republican's fault, because they're not. They're the ones that aren't
passing this this cleaned up cr that got rid of
the pay raises, got rid of the health benefits, got
rid of all the other pork that was in it
there and reduced it from fifteen hundred pages down to
I think twenty two pages or twenty four pages. So

(31:56):
I thought that was a great accomplishment. And then Gouber
number fifty seven twenty two says Mike, sorry, you didn't
convince me with that explanation. It might make them hammer
out better bills if they voted separate on each instead
of shoving it in one and forcing it through. Yes,
if we had time to do that, but we don't
have time. So you know, at some point and Trump's

(32:22):
got to do this. Trump's got to either grow some
cajones for Mike Johnson so that come late spring early summer,
we have twelve separate appropriations bills and we stopped this
insanity because quite frankly, I'm sick of trying to explain

(32:43):
to it. So while some of you say that you
don't find my explanation, then another of you says that, oh,
you're a hundred per spent one hundred