Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now, I when I have a few minutes to
chat with Nebraska US Senator Pete Ricketts back. Are you
back in DC still?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Senator back in Nebraska? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Okay? Good.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We took votes yesterday and the Democrats once again voted
to keep government shut down. So Leer soon said, we'll
try again next week.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. Well, they're gonna they're going to have the big
national anti Trump protests all weekend, so I imagine they
want to at least wait till after that. Just a
quick question.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, in fact, Schumer's actually Schumer's actually speaking at that,
so you know, he wasn't gonna allowed to hap them
before he actually spoke at the rally, right, They just
they'd beat him up no end if he actually allowed
that to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
This is the follow up question on the shutdown because
I got a couple other things I want to ask
you about. But are you seeing after this weekend demonstration
protests and all that. Are you seeing movement among any
of your Democrat colleagues. Do you think there.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Are some of the Democrats that are more reasonable? In fact,
I would say most of the Democrats don't want to
have a government shutdown. It's really Schumer and some of
the far lefties to do. But yeah, so there are
some conversations about trying to get things done. We'll pick
those up again next week. Now once Schumer gets past this,
you know, no kings right, like I said, there's no
(01:12):
way he was going to allow anything to happen. When
that happened, was not going on. Right after that, we'll
see if we can get more. But you know, I
do want to point out that the Republicans are offering
the bipartisan solution there right, three Democrats, well you count
AGAs Kan's independent who votes. The Democrats have already voted
for this, and all the Democrats voted for this four
times in the past, including last spring, so they've all
(01:34):
been on board with this exact same bill in the past,
and three of them are still on it right now.
This is the only bipartisan solution. What Schumer's offering is
a partisan bill that rips out the real health care Fund,
that would put back regulations of those nursing homes, that
would spend over a trillion dollars more. And you know
they're partisan stuff. I mean it, really, the contrast Chair
(01:55):
couldn't be more glareous.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
How do you explain polls, Pete, there are some, not all,
there are some that blame the Republicans for this.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You got to do a better job as Republicans get
the message out about if you go back and look
at the Biden administration, we didn't shut down the government
when we're in the minority, and now the Democrats that
they're the minority in the Senate are bent on shutdown.
It's hypocritical because again they're looking at the exact same thing.
And we just got to continue to get the message
out there so that people know what's really going on.
(02:27):
You know that it's the Republicans who are voting to
keep it open with a bipartisan bill. The Democrats are
the ones trying to shut down.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, I want to talk to you about that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And by the way, it's also the hypocritical thing is
that these guys have also been the same ones in
the past have said that we shouldn't shut down government,
right shooting yourself was the one saying that the shutdown
is the politics of idiocy, of confrontation and paralysis, and
no reasonable Republican Democrat wants to shut down goverman, yet
now here he's doing it.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I want to talk to you too about Nebraska agriculture,
particularly soybean. Farmers are in the middle of the harvest,
great harvest China because the trade war has shut down imports.
It's a huge issue. I know the President has made
some noises about about helping out American farmers. At the
same time he may be sending forty billion to Argentina
(03:14):
to bail out their farmers. What do you think of that.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, first of all, let's be clear, China was cutting
back on their soybean imports during the Biden administration. So
between twenty three and twenty four they cut our soybean
imports in half. Okay, so they were already moving away
from US at that point. And the Biden administration was
the only last administration was Jimmy Carr not to sign
a trade deal. The Biden administration did not go out
(03:38):
for agricultural products, and as a result, we ran four
years in a row of agricultural trade deficits. And while
we've got more work to do. If you look at
this administration, Trump has been trying to get trade deals open,
like with the UK, where there agreed to buy nine
hundred million dollars more of our agricultural products. And in fact,
if you look at our agricultural exports, specifically a soybeans,
(03:58):
and like I said, we still got a lot more
work to do. Soybean exports on a dollar value for
the first six months of this year are up from
two hundred and thirteen million dollars to two hundred and
fifty million dollars. And if you look year over year
in August, soybeing exports by bushel are up over twenty
one million bushels. So we got more work to do.
I certainly think that the administration needs to have a
(04:19):
conversation with Argentina about who they're choosing to sell their
soy means to, especially if they're going to give China
tax breaks and stuff like that. But this administration is
actually working to increase agricultural exports. Well, the last administration,
the Biden administration, failed to lift a finger to do anything.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, so what do you think about the condition of
our producers here in Nebraska are soybean producers?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, as I've been talking to the administration, there's some
things we need to do. Obviously, we need to keep
opening up trade deals. There's other countries out there that
we need to be really pushing on, like going to
Indonesia and Malaysia and Vietnam. There's a lot of Dawyer
economies in Southeast Asia that we need to be talking to.
We need to get E fifteen all year round and
really pushing the administration to put their shoulder into this
(05:05):
so that we can start finding more uses, for example,
for our corn. And then finally, one of the things
we need to do is just focus more on animal agriculture.
Like as people get wealthy around the world and more protein,
we're more be poor chicken, those sort of things, So
we need to expand those operations here and in fact,
that's value added to agriculture. That's what we should be
selling overseas. That will get us more economic activity than
(05:30):
just selling straight soybeans. So the more that we can
move to animal agriculture and those value added products ethanols
and other value added agricultural products soybeans, we can do
renewable diesel. I've got my Renewable Fuels for Ocean Going
Vessels Act that would give ocean going vessels the same
sort of benefit the terrestrial deals vehicles get for using biofuels.
(05:52):
So those are some of the things we can do
to find more value added uses for the products that
grow here in Nebraska.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Okay, one more thing, Pete about the shutdown air traffic controllers.
How much heartburn do you have about another week or
two without any money for them? And what this is
going to do for travel, especially you move closer to
Thanksgiving in the holidays. Is there money somewhere in somebody's
sofa to pay them for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So this is the cost of Schumer shutdown right the
shoot because Chuck Schumer, the Democrats don't really care about
the people who are working in these important positions like
air traffic controllers or law enforcements. You saw that the
Trump administration is going to work to get our military
members paid. They don't really care about us because they
claim to want to fight for them, they don't. They
don't really care. So we as Republicans gonna look for
(06:42):
alternative solutions. But really the answer is for the Democrats
to vote for our Biparson bill and get going back
open and keep working on appropriations bills.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So they could walk off the job. So can see
you believe that these air traffic controllers are just going
to have to get up and leave because they're working
for nothing now.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So they will get paid once government reopens again. Everbody's
going to get their back pay. And what we as
Republicans are working on some ideas on things we can
do to get this resolved, but we really need Democrats
to be partners in this. And so far, you know,
Chuck Schumer with all his I mean, go look at
the No Kings rally. Look at the list of the
(07:20):
groups to doing this. All the far lefty groups are
sponsoring this No King's rally. And Chuck Schumer is freightable
and so he can't do He's shaking in his boots
about this stuff. So we need him to get over
his fear and start working with us to get this
resolve just.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Quickly before we run. Senator, do you believe the Israel
Hamas piece deal is durable? They're executing people. Hamas executing
people in the streets over there in Gaza.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Come ons is the brutal terist organization. This is a
good step toward peace, right, This is a good thing.
You know, President Trump is done a fantastic job to
get all parties to the table. It is going to
rely on what we's going to have to happen here though,
is eventually Moss is going to have to give up power.
They can't be a threat to Israel. Israel not allow that,
We won't allow that. This is a good step in
(08:07):
the right direction. But again, those public executions that Moss
is doing just demonstrates what a brutal terrorist organization they
are and why they cannot be allowed to remain in
power exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Thanks for the time, Sounder
Right now, I when I have a few minutes to
chat with Nebraska US Senator Pete Ricketts back. Are you
back in DC still?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Senator back in Nebraska? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Okay? Good.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We took votes yesterday and the Democrats once again voted
to keep government shut down. So Leer soon said, we'll
try again next week.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. Well, they're gonna they're going to have the big
national anti Trump protests all weekend, so I imagine they
want to at least wait till after that. Just a
quick question.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, in fact, Schumer's actually Schumer's actually speaking at that,
so you know, he wasn't gonna allowed to hap them
before he actually spoke at the rally, right, They just
they'd beat him up no end if he actually allowed
that to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
This is the follow up question on the shutdown because
I got a couple other things I want to ask
you about. But are you seeing after this weekend demonstration
protests and all that. Are you seeing movement among any
of your Democrat colleagues. Do you think there.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Are some of the Democrats that are more reasonable? In fact,
I would say most of the Democrats don't want to
have a government shutdown. It's really Schumer and some of
the far lefties to do. But yeah, so there are
some conversations about trying to get things done. We'll pick
those up again next week. Now once Schumer gets past this,
you know, no kings right, like I said, there's no
(01:12):
way he was going to allow anything to happen. When
that happened, was not going on. Right after that, we'll
see if we can get more. But you know, I
do want to point out that the Republicans are offering
the bipartisan solution there right, three Democrats, well you count
AGAs Kan's independent who votes. The Democrats have already voted
for this, and all the Democrats voted for this four
times in the past, including last spring, so they've all
(01:34):
been on board with this exact same bill in the past,
and three of them are still on it right now.
This is the only bipartisan solution. What Schumer's offering is
a partisan bill that rips out the real health care Fund,
that would put back regulations of those nursing homes, that
would spend over a trillion dollars more. And you know
they're partisan stuff. I mean it, really, the contrast Chair
(01:55):
couldn't be more glareous.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
How do you explain polls, Pete, there are some, not all,
there are some that blame the Republicans for this.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You got to do a better job as Republicans get
the message out about if you go back and look
at the Biden administration, we didn't shut down the government
when we're in the minority, and now the Democrats that
they're the minority in the Senate are bent on shutdown.
It's hypocritical because again they're looking at the exact same thing.
And we just got to continue to get the message
out there so that people know what's really going on.
(02:27):
You know that it's the Republicans who are voting to
keep it open with a bipartisan bill. The Democrats are
the ones trying to shut down.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, I want to talk to you about that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And by the way, it's also the hypocritical thing is
that these guys have also been the same ones in
the past have said that we shouldn't shut down government,
right shooting yourself was the one saying that the shutdown
is the politics of idiocy, of confrontation and paralysis, and
no reasonable Republican Democrat wants to shut down goverman, yet
now here he's doing it.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I want to talk to you too about Nebraska agriculture,
particularly soybean. Farmers are in the middle of the harvest,
great harvest China because the trade war has shut down imports.
It's a huge issue. I know the President has made
some noises about about helping out American farmers. At the
same time he may be sending forty billion to Argentina
(03:14):
to bail out their farmers. What do you think of that.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, first of all, let's be clear, China was cutting
back on their soybean imports during the Biden administration. So
between twenty three and twenty four they cut our soybean
imports in half. Okay, so they were already moving away
from US at that point. And the Biden administration was
the only last administration was Jimmy Carr not to sign
a trade deal. The Biden administration did not go out
(03:38):
for agricultural products, and as a result, we ran four
years in a row of agricultural trade deficits. And while
we've got more work to do. If you look at
this administration, Trump has been trying to get trade deals open,
like with the UK, where there agreed to buy nine
hundred million dollars more of our agricultural products. And in fact,
if you look at our agricultural exports, specifically a soybeans,
(03:58):
and like I said, we still got a lot more
work to do. Soybean exports on a dollar value for
the first six months of this year are up from
two hundred and thirteen million dollars to two hundred and
fifty million dollars. And if you look year over year
in August, soybeing exports by bushel are up over twenty
one million bushels. So we got more work to do.
I certainly think that the administration needs to have a
(04:19):
conversation with Argentina about who they're choosing to sell their
soy means to, especially if they're going to give China
tax breaks and stuff like that. But this administration is
actually working to increase agricultural exports. Well, the last administration,
the Biden administration, failed to lift a finger to do anything.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, so what do you think about the condition of
our producers here in Nebraska are soybean producers?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, as I've been talking to the administration, there's some
things we need to do. Obviously, we need to keep
opening up trade deals. There's other countries out there that
we need to be really pushing on, like going to
Indonesia and Malaysia and Vietnam. There's a lot of Dawyer
economies in Southeast Asia that we need to be talking to.
We need to get E fifteen all year round and
really pushing the administration to put their shoulder into this
(05:05):
so that we can start finding more uses, for example,
for our corn. And then finally, one of the things
we need to do is just focus more on animal agriculture.
Like as people get wealthy around the world and more protein,
we're more be poor chicken, those sort of things, So
we need to expand those operations here and in fact,
that's value added to agriculture. That's what we should be
selling overseas. That will get us more economic activity than
(05:30):
just selling straight soybeans. So the more that we can
move to animal agriculture and those value added products ethanols
and other value added agricultural products soybeans, we can do
renewable diesel. I've got my Renewable Fuels for Ocean Going
Vessels Act that would give ocean going vessels the same
sort of benefit the terrestrial deals vehicles get for using biofuels.
(05:52):
So those are some of the things we can do
to find more value added uses for the products that
grow here in Nebraska.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Okay, one more thing, Pete about the shutdown air traffic controllers.
How much heartburn do you have about another week or
two without any money for them? And what this is
going to do for travel, especially you move closer to
Thanksgiving in the holidays. Is there money somewhere in somebody's
sofa to pay them for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So this is the cost of Schumer shutdown right the
shoot because Chuck Schumer, the Democrats don't really care about
the people who are working in these important positions like
air traffic controllers or law enforcements. You saw that the
Trump administration is going to work to get our military
members paid. They don't really care about us because they
claim to want to fight for them, they don't. They
don't really care. So we as Republicans gonna look for
(06:42):
alternative solutions. But really the answer is for the Democrats
to vote for our Biparson bill and get going back
open and keep working on appropriations bills.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So they could walk off the job. So can see
you believe that these air traffic controllers are just going
to have to get up and leave because they're working
for nothing now.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So they will get paid once government reopens again. Everbody's
going to get their back pay. And what we as
Republicans are working on some ideas on things we can
do to get this resolved, but we really need Democrats
to be partners in this. And so far, you know,
Chuck Schumer with all his I mean, go look at
the No Kings rally. Look at the list of the
(07:20):
groups to doing this. All the far lefty groups are
sponsoring this No King's rally. And Chuck Schumer is freightable
and so he can't do He's shaking in his boots
about this stuff. So we need him to get over
his fear and start working with us to get this
resolve just.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Quickly before we run. Senator, do you believe the Israel
Hamas piece deal is durable? They're executing people. Hamas executing
people in the streets over there in Gaza.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Come ons is the brutal terist organization. This is a
good step toward peace, right, This is a good thing.
You know, President Trump is done a fantastic job to
get all parties to the table. It is going to
rely on what we's going to have to happen here though,
is eventually Moss is going to have to give up power.
They can't be a threat to Israel. Israel not allow that,
We won't allow that. This is a good step in
(08:07):
the right direction. But again, those public executions that Moss
is doing just demonstrates what a brutal terrorist organization they
are and why they cannot be allowed to remain in
power exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Thanks for the time, Sounder
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