Congressman Massie joined Brian Thomas this morning

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Anywhere, anytime.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Take your infot to go.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm listening through IAR powered by fifty five krs the
talk station eight o five fifty five KRSD talk station
named very Happy Wednesday to you, a happy birthday to
my mom, and I'm so pleased. I call it my
favorite hour, Brady. When we get Congressman Thomas Massey followed
by Judge Anapolitano, and welcome back to the fifty five

(00:25):
KRC Morning Show, Congressman Massie. It's always a distinct pleasure
having you on the program.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Great to be on with you, Brian.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I was thinking about the song Missus Robinson Simon and
gar Garfuggle laugh about it, shout about it. When you've
got to choose, any way you look at it, you'll lose,
you know. Under the first Trump administrations are our deficits swelled,
and then you get even worse under the Biden administration,
where thirty seven trillion dollars are almost in the hole.
And I was had I had great expectations and since

(00:53):
we now control the House and the Senate and the
executive branch, that the Republicans would deliver on pairing back
the size and scope of govern most notably on the
heels of what DOGE revealed as small as it was
compared to overall government spending. We spend a lot of
money on a lot of really stupid, wasteful stuff, and
there's also a heapload of fraud, wasted abuse, and yet
the so called big beautiful bill doesn't really do anything

(01:16):
by way of cutting the direction we're going on Congress
from Massa.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Your reaction, Yeah, well, I've got a little bit of
good news. Let's start out with that. Oh, good to vote.
We're going to vote on about nine billion dollars of
recisions this week, either today or tomorrow. That's great news
because I've people are my colleagues are like, wow, Massy's
going to vote yes on somebody. And I'm telling him, yeah,

(01:42):
this is in twelve years, the first time I've seen
this actually cut spending anywhere. So yeah, you're done right.
I'm voting yes. And there may be some moderate Republicans
who have a hard time getting to the altar on
this one, but this, you know that's going to happen.
But here, keep this in mind, though, Brian, these are
billion The recisions are billion dollar answers to trillion dollar products.

(02:07):
We have a deficit. That's how much we add to
the debt every year. We have a deficit of about
two trillion dollars, and a trillion of that is interest. Yeah,
these are crazy numbers. And I did a calculation. We're
about to take a bunch of our debt that's at

(02:27):
you know, zero percent or two percent or three percent,
and refinance it in the next year because it's short
term debt at five percent and above, because that's what
the thirty year notes at five percent, the twenty year
notes at five percent. These are this is what the
government pays people to finance our debt. And so I

(02:49):
did a quick calculation. It's going to be sixteen thousand
dollars a year in interest per American family that the
government is paying. That's sixteen thousand dollars that every family
is responsible for it ultimately in the end per year
where to get no services whatsoever. It's just interest on
the debt is like a credit card bill bill, I know,

(03:14):
the big beautiful bill. Let's put it in perspective, is
a sixteen hundred dollars tax break per per family. So
you we're racking out sixteen thousand dollars of debt per
family just an interest per year, and we're telling actually
racking up about thirty two thousand dollars of debt per family,
but it's sixteen thousand that its interest. And we're telling folks,

(03:37):
we're going to give you a sixteen hundred dollars tax break,
and we're going to spend another They're appropriating about two
hundred and fifty or three hundred billion dollars of money
in this bill, some of which I agree needs to
be spent for border enforcement, but some of it is
just military bloat.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well, I see, I'm glad you brought that up, because
you know, while I am a supporter of the American
military and the veterans out there, and I've got their backs,
you can't tell me the when our military can't pass
an audit like eight times in a row, there is
insufficient information. We got a trillion dollar annual expenditure for
the American military that there is not fraud, wasted abuse

(04:21):
built into that, and just scads of it. That we
wouldn't have to have a trillion dollar annual military budget
in order to meet the actual demands and needs for
equipment and hardware and salaries. You just need to cut
out the fraud, wasted abuse. They should be mandated to
have an audit. They should go through it like Doge
went through USA for example. I bet they could find

(04:41):
billions and billions and billions of waste and unnecessary expenditures.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
But instead we're going to throw more money at right now,
here's the interesting thing. There's two buckets of money that
we spend. We spend discretionary money. That's what goes in
the omnibus or the cr that should be twelve separate bills,
that's like roads and bridges, NASA, actually, the court system,
the military. And then there's the non discretionary or entitlements

(05:08):
that would be Medicaid, Medicare, social security. That's about three
quarters of our budget. They say that this reconciliation bill
is only supposed to deal with the mandatory spending the Medicare,
Medicaid because of the rules of reconciliation, you can't touch
those security, so Medicaid, Medicare and some other mandatory programs

(05:31):
or what you're supposed to be adjusting in order to
balance the budget and a reconciliation bill. But they've discovered
that they can spend discretionary money on the mandatory side
using reconciliation. Now I haven't got to the punchline yet,
so they're going to, you know, throw another one hundred
billion dollars at the military in this reconciliation bill that

(05:53):
should be in the in the discretionary bill comes up
in September. So they're telling all of us, well, from
the parliamentary rules allow us to increase discretionary spending and
the reconciliation bill, but they do not allow us under
a circumstance to decrease discretionary spending and the Reconciliation Bill.

(06:13):
They make up these rules and tell you what they
want them to be for their own convenience when they
want to spend the money. And the reason they're telling
me we need to spend one hundred billion dollars of
discretionary money and the reconciliation bill for the military is
so that when we get to the battle over the
Omnibus or the cr that should be twelve separate bills

(06:35):
that will already have the military plused up, so we
won't have to give the Democrats more of their money
to get more of our money priorities, which normally be
the military for Republicans. And they're saying this will save
us money if we go ahead and spend it now,
then we will have to Oh my lord, it's pretty crazy.

(06:55):
But here's where we are with all this. You know,
I'm still taking heat for not voting for the big,
beautiful bill, but it already passed the House. Now. Interestingly,
it passed a couple of weeks ago. They're going to
change the language of this bill today after it passed.
They said, because we haven't seen though it sounds like

(07:18):
you're listened to fiction at this point. Yes, Lacey said,
you got to vote for a bill to find out
what's in it. Mike Johnson says, well, we passed it
two weeks ago, but we're going to change what's in
it before we send it to the Senate. They're literally
changing the language substantial portions of this bill after we
voted on it.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
How can that be accomplished. I mean, there's got to
be some form of protests or objections. It would need
to be revoted on.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Okay, we are going to vote on it, but they're
high to hint in another resolution that's not even a bill.
There's a resolution to bring the recisions to the floor. Yeah,
from the Rules Committee, and inside of that resolution. They've
got what's called a self executing amendment. When you vote
for this resolution, there's an amendment that pops up and

(08:10):
passes itself without a vote. And the way they can
do this is you're taking the vote. You're voting on
bringing recisions to the floor, and they've hidden this other
matter inside of it, so they can say, well, you
voted to change the language. But the reality is no Republican,
including myself probably is it's going to vote against bringing

(08:32):
recisions to the floor, and so that's how they're going
to change the language to build. Now I've I've looked
at the provisions that came out last night. This is
the other thing. We just last night finally got to
peek at what they want to change the language to today,
and it's not I can't. I'm suspicious of some of

(08:54):
the changes, but I haven't found the catch yet. I
think they call them technical changes. They're more than technical changes,
but they're not too dangerous, I think. So I'll probably
vote for this resolution that lets them do it, because
that same resolution brings recisions exactly and I don't want
to blame for stopping that. Now it'll go to the

(09:15):
Senate and there are some senators over there who are
trying to make this bill better, Mike Lee, Rick Scott,
Ron Johnson, Ran Paul and I've said, if this thing
gets better in the Senate, I could vote for it
when it comes back to the House because we'll we'll
have to vote on it again if they change even

(09:36):
the punctuation in the Senate.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right now, I guess what changes can be made in
the Senate that'll make it palatable for Congress than Thomas Massey.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
They they can find another three trillion dollars of savings
in this bill, for instance, the Green New Deal. This
bill's you know, the House bill doesn't get rid of
the Green New Deal. They call it the Inflation Reduction Act,
but they put a lot of the deal in there.
It says, as long as you start building your battery

(10:09):
factory or your solar panel thing or whatever by a
certain date, you can still get the subsidies. It doesn't
go cold Turkey. Well, in the Senate, they could move
that date closer to today and stop it and it
wouldn't be completely cold Turkey. There would still be people
getting subsidies from the Green New Deal, but you could
save maybe three hundred billion six hundred billion by moving

(10:33):
that up quicker. The biggest change you could make to
save money is there's three hundred it's about three hundred
and seventy or three hundred and ninety billion dollars giveaway
to sanctuary cities and blue states. This state and local
tax deduction, okay, the best part, the best policy of

(10:57):
Trump's twenty seventeen tax cutting jobs, which I voted for.
Took it put a ten thousand dollars exactly state and
local tax deductions, which if you're middle class in a
red state, it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't really
a tax increase. But for people in blue states had
been getting a free ride on the local taxes. They

(11:19):
just take that off of their federal taxes.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
We out here in the red states are subsidizing the
blue states with that salt, and that's what irked me.
I was talking to Americans for Prosperous Donovan and Neel
the last hour about this, and I find that offensive.
And it could provide cover for the blue state Republicans
who pushed that through. That increase to forty thousand dollars
if the Senate backs it up to ten thousand dollars

(11:42):
and keeps it where it is. At least they can
throw their hands up and say, listen, I can't vote
against this because it keeps American taxpayers taxes low. But
I'm sorry. I tried to get the salt increase, but
I couldn't accomplish it. But being broader, tax cuts are
more important than me fighting for ourridiculously high tech states.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Correct, and it's it's about three hundred and ninety billion
dollars transfer of money. Basically, what if the salt means
We're just going to add that much more to the
deficit and the people in the red states will be
paying interest on the debt because we had this giveaway
to the blue state. It's a total reversal of Trump's

(12:23):
policy in twenty seventeen. And the policy in twenty seventeen
is what helped turn Florida red. There were people in
California and New York and said, well, if we're not
getting a free ride on our state and local taxes,
we're getting out of these hellholes exactly, and they moved
to Florida. And now you've got La Los Angeles is

(12:43):
a sanctuary city, and we're and with high real estate prices,
so this is a gift to them, to California and
New York and Illinois. And you've got some You've got
some Republicans in the House who want it because they're
from this but you don't have any senators from blue states.
There's no you know, Republican senators. They should just outright

(13:06):
clean this out of the bill. So there's just a
and then's the work requirements on medicator kind of a
joke in the House bill. They're not. The state's already
no ways around those to get exemptions. So they could
strengthen that in the Senate. They could find another three
trillion dollars of cuts and send it back to the House,

(13:28):
and I could I would fear also take out this
crazy AI provision that I believe unconstitutional that would let
AI companies. It's a nod to AI companies that they
should be able to get expedited zoning, in other words,
override state and local laws so that they can put

(13:48):
their their data centers wherever they want and states wouldn't
be able to regulate. They need to take that out.
If they did those things, skinny this thing down, send
it back to the House. You could probably vote for that.
If Mike Lee and those guys can prevail on this.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Fair enough, I'll bring it back. I'll get you a
quick comment or two about the riot situation in Los
Angeles and elsewhere it's growing. We'll continue with Congress from Massey.
It's eight nineteen to fifty five Kercity Talk station. This
is fifty five KRC and iHeartRadio station.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Capital one cardholders can score there.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Ten and nine. Wee forecasts. Got a sunny day to day,
a bit hazy because of the Canadian wildfires. Eighty three
for the high, clearvernight, sixty for the low eighty six tomorrow,
humidity rising. It'll be sunny, a few clouds over night,
down to sixty five, and most of the dry day
on Friday, but showers show up late evening and then
on into the weekend, including some storms in the weekend.

(14:43):
Eighty four for Friday's high. It's sixty four. In time
for traffic from.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
The UCL Traffic Center. From massage therapy to stress relief
and cancer surveillance, the UC Cancer Center offers the region's
largest supporting services program for cancer patients and survivors, called
five Month three five to eighty five. See you see
Southbound seventy five break lights continue through Wachland southbound seventy one.
The ramp to the lateral is blocked off westbound thanks

(15:09):
to an accident. Northbound seventy one slows above the lateral
to an accident near Montgomery Road in Kenwood. Chuck Ingram
on fifty five KR seat the talk station.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Hey twenty one fifty about KRSD talk station, Brian Thomas,
the Congress and Thomas Massey. All right, it broke down
the big BBB and what the changes might be in
the Senate that would garner Thomas Massey's vote. I love
your suggestions and I hope they embrace them real quick. Here,
if you had a t lea freed in terms of
what you want from the Senate in terms of changes,
do you think you're going to deliver on that?

Speaker 2 (15:42):
I don't know. I think you can have a good chance.
The negotiation you start when you say no, right, yeah,
And so you've got Ron Johnson and Rampaul are no,
Mike Lee and Rich Scott Lean no. And if they
just tell the senators no and the President no. Look,
the President is not wedded to this blue state bailout. No.

(16:04):
I understand fault times. He in our conference, he told
him to drop it, and it's costing to it's politically,
it's costing too much, he said. He told the New
York guys, just give it up. I was going to
let it pass, but now it's made such a big stink,
and you weren't happy with the small increase, so just
give it up. So these aren't things the President is against.

(16:28):
Also on the Green New Deal, like going cold Turkey
and cutting that off quicker instead of letting it keep
going for a while. The president's with us on that.
He's just waiting to see what they'll do in the Senate.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
All right, well, keep my fingers crossed and maybe even
say a prayer that that it gets accomplished. Now your
reaction way.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I learned. I learned one thing from your radio show
during the break. I'm not I'm not going to get
to cut my hay this weekend. The weather reports.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
It's going to be wet and the No King's rally
will probably less well attended, which allows us a nice
pivot over to the Los Angeles situation. You know, ICE
is doing its job. It's allowed to go in even
though law enforcement doesn't want to help them. The politicians
don't want to help ICE. They don't like the idea
of deporting these hardened, terrible criminals, or anybody else for
that matter. But ICE can still come to the neighborhoods

(17:16):
and do it and they get attacked. Newsom doesn't do anything,
Bass doesn't do anything. Law enforcement there says they're overwhelmed.
Enter the National Guard. Donald Trump's trying to help the
citizens of Los Angeles area from the violence they're facing,
and of course that's met with objections. What's your take
on all this, Congress from Assey?

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well, you know, the police say they can't help. The
reason it can't help is the locals have passed laws
that made it a sanctuary city. Yep. And so you
have to send in federal agents to do this. And
then you've got the protesters are destroying the federal property,
federal assets, and endangering federal officers. So you got to

(17:56):
send in the guard. So and I think this is
a this is a tipping point, I think Democrats. So
it's the policy is right. Trump's got the policy right.
You can't reward people for coming here illegally. You can't
reward the sanctuary cities for harboring these people and you've
got to deport them. But the policy is right, but

(18:18):
also the politics are right. I mean the the governor
and Karen Bass, who actually used to be in the
House Representatives I served with, there's they they're losing this
argument in the court of public opinion with the modern
you know, with let's say independence, and so it's you know,

(18:41):
this is this is an issue where I think Trump's
right to double down and he just got a big
win from the court. The Gavin Newsom asked the courts
to intervene until Trump he couldn't send in the guard
and it's actually I think of a judge appointed by
Bill Clinton said no, we're not going to give you
this injunction. And so you know, Trump got to win

(19:02):
there and he just needs to keep going.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, the court has set a hearing for I believe tomorrow.
He denied that they denied the temporary restraining order and said, no,
we're going to get the federal government, uh in the
state additional time to file briefs and then they're going
to have actual hearing on it. So uh, no temporary
restraining order issued. So it's it's it actually deny the
governor's request completely outright, there's going to be a further

(19:28):
hearing on the propriety of it. So it ain't over.
The fat Lady has not yet sang on that one,
but so far a win.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
And in this and it'll and it will set up
an interesting situation if the judge does, you know, ultimately
give some kind of injunction. I mean, it's it's fisher
cut bait for our country.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Well true, but see, I suppose you know, the the
National Guard, Trump, you know comment during the California wing
of the National Guard, the governor US could send the
National Guard in if this is taken away, because if
it's taken away and there's no more National guardsmen on
the streets, chaos will ensue and he's going to have
to do something about it. So he can just basically

(20:09):
do exactly what Trump did, but just from his own
governor's desk.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
We could also Karen bass Is put in a curfew. Yeah,
at least there's acknowledgement that something's not right here. But
then you've also you've got Governor knew some inciting these folks.
Though at the same.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Time, indeed, because it's Trump, it's Trump doing it. Trump's
effort to enforce the law and protect the federal property.
And the National Guard is causing people to break into
sushi stores, gas stations, burn WAYMO vehicles, and throw chunks
of concrete at vehicles.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
And you know what, this would be a great moment
for Trump to come out and say, we're not giving
you state and local tax deductions to sanctuary cities and
sanctuary states, like governor saying, you know, it wasn't the House,
big beautiful bill. We're taking it out the Senate. And
because we're not going to give you these handouts for

(21:08):
you to go to basically perpetuate bad policy.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, you know, behind the scenes, I hope Trump is
having a conversation with some of those senators telling them
to do exactly that.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah, I mean, behind the scenes he had that conversation
with us. I was in the room, by the way.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
He asked if I was in the room, and I
raised my hand and he said, there's there's dumb MESSI
he's basically you know, he and ran Paul very similar.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
They got the same hair. They are from Kentucky, and
you can't get him to vote for anything. And then
he said, but I like Massey's hair better.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Congress of messy, take what you can get. Judge on
Depoulaton is listening. He's waiting in the wings. He's a
huge fan of yours, and I know you're a huge
fan of his. He's waving at you through our zoom
conference and he's going to be joining the program next
to talk about the constitutional reality of what's going on
in LA. Congressman Thomas Massey, God bless you will keep
our fingers crossed that the changes you're looking for from

(22:16):
the Senate actually occur so you can vote yes on
the big beautiful bill. God bless you, sir, And thanks
for the time you swive my listeners and.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Me give my love to the judge you just did.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
He heard you. We'll talk soon. Take care of my friend.
Eight twenty eight, fifty five KRC Detok

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Station fifty five KRC