Speaker 1: Billy Cunningham, the great American, welcome this Wednesday after in
Speaker 1: the tries date a little bit of rainy. We need
Speaker 1: a little bit of Wednesday and Thursday. Things are going
Speaker 1: to be clear on Friday for Halloween. But until then
Speaker 1: all hell's breaking loose. Of course, I monitor all the
Speaker 1: shows so you don't have to. MSNBC is blaming the Republicans,
Speaker 1: mainly Congressman Warren Davidson, of everything happening bad in the world.
Speaker 1: You watch the other shows, and basically it's the idea
Speaker 1: that the Congress has voted to fund food stamps that
Speaker 1: went down the tubes. Then the Congress voted to fund
Speaker 1: the military. Democrats didn't like that. And Republicans have offered
Speaker 1: a one year continuance of the Biden budget and the
Speaker 1: Democrats don't want that. So what the hell do they want?
Speaker 1: As Charlie Kirk often said, when the talking ends, that's
Speaker 1: when violence begins. Janan, you and I now is Congressman
Speaker 1: Warren Davidson. I think of the eighth Congressional District and
Speaker 1: Congressman Davidson welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. So
Speaker 1: what does the congressman do when nothing's going on? You're
Speaker 1: out of session, not much happening, and Mike Johnson's called
Speaker 1: your backs and not called you back. So what do
Speaker 1: you do if anything, Well.
Speaker 2: It's always an honor to join you and your listeners,
Speaker 2: Willie and look, it's pretty similar to normal, except you've
Speaker 2: got less structure to your time. I mean, I'm working
Speaker 2: on bills with colleagues, working in particular on an outbound
Speaker 2: investment bill this morning, back and forth with several colleagues
Speaker 2: and staff.
Speaker 3: I was out in DC last week.
Speaker 2: Met with White House on that and a couple other bills,
Speaker 2: met with Senators on some of these things. And so
Speaker 2: you're still doing some of the same kinds of collaboration.
Speaker 2: In a way, it's you get bigger blocks of time
Speaker 2: to focus on other bills. So you're trying to make
Speaker 2: lemonade out of limits I mean, and the limits are
Speaker 2: handed out by Democrats.
Speaker 3: We've called the votes. The House of Representatives.
Speaker 2: Has voted to fund the government, yes, which is why
Speaker 2: we're not in session. We're waiting on the Senate and
Speaker 2: we can't really proceed until they decide how they're going
Speaker 2: to proceed. And they've offered everything in the world to Democrats.
Speaker 2: But look, to be fair, Democrats have said, here's our
Speaker 2: list of demands. It's one and a half trillion dollars
Speaker 2: worth of stuff they know they're not getting. No, you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't accidentally defund Usaid. We didn't accidentally turn off
Speaker 2: their ability to take credit for funding with state dollars
Speaker 2: but get reimbursed from the federal dollars for funding illegals
Speaker 2: with Medicaid money. We didn't accidentally. We didn't accidentally do
Speaker 2: these things. And frankly, they didn't accidentally set expiration dates
Speaker 2: for the COVID funding on Obamacare. You know, it was
Speaker 2: a bill that passed with one hundred percent Democrat votes,
Speaker 2: just like Obamacare did in the first way. And they're
Speaker 2: just trying to continue the subsidies because Obamacare failed. It
Speaker 2: isn't affordable, and it doesn't work. It works in fact
Speaker 2: the way that we've said that it was designed to,
Speaker 2: which is a poisoned pill to destroy American healthcare and
Speaker 2: deliver what they want, which is single payer communist healthcare.
Speaker 1: All let's talk about. First of all, I want to
Speaker 1: have out his issue number two. It Issue number one
Speaker 1: is snap what's our food stamps? In twenty nineteen, which
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly. The dark age is twenty nineteen. US government's
Speaker 1: spend fifty six billion dollars on food stamps in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Now the number is one hundred and two billion. It
Speaker 1: is more than doubled in the last five years. Now,
Speaker 1: I did a little research from the US Budget Office
Speaker 1: about who gets food stamps.
Speaker 3: How about this one?
Speaker 1: Food stamps by ethnicity. Afghans forty five percent, Somali's forty
Speaker 1: three percent, iraqis thirty five percent, Dominican Caribbean Islanders twenty
Speaker 1: eight percent, the Native Americans is twenty five percent, Puerto
Speaker 1: Ricans twenty seven percent, Cubans twenty five percent, Cambodians twenty
Speaker 1: three percent. Can you smell when I'm cooking? Essentially, may
Speaker 1: I've raised my hand in the.
Speaker 3: Back of the room.
Speaker 1: The cost of food stamps have more than doubled, and
Speaker 1: it's the ethnicity of those receiving it. Many here illegally
Speaker 1: be waiting for a hearing has increased greatly. So when
Speaker 1: you show up somewhere and you can say I claim
Speaker 1: refugee status, I want a hearing, the officer will say, well,
Speaker 1: are you available in the year twenty five two? Yes,
Speaker 1: I am available. In the meantime, here's your list, your
Speaker 1: menu of government benefits. We are funding the world. Plus
Speaker 1: there's a twenty percent factor of waste, fraud and abuse.
Speaker 1: So if we go back to twenty nineteen levels along
Speaker 1: with the rate of inflation, we should spend about sixty
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Instead we spend double that.
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean these are things that Democrats designed, and frankly,
Speaker 2: the unfortunate part is a lot of this is embedded
Speaker 2: in status quot funding. So this is why Republicans are
Speaker 2: compromising with status quot funding, because the real policy is
Speaker 2: we want to go way different than that.
Speaker 3: Now, the big thing that we did.
Speaker 2: Back in the summer was we said, look, if you're
Speaker 2: able bodied, working age adult, you don't have dependent kids
Speaker 2: at home, well then you got to go to work eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, you got to get a job, go to school, volunteer,
Speaker 2: do something that used to be bipartisan. And frankly, when
Speaker 2: I pull it in the eighth district, it is bipartisan.
Speaker 2: But nationally Democrats say, oh, you know, we can't expect
Speaker 2: that that's totally unreasonable. But knowing full well that exactly
Speaker 2: what they would do for a friend and family member.
Speaker 2: I don't know the ethnic breakdown on everybody, but the
Speaker 2: troubling numbers. I think it's about fifty three percent of
Speaker 2: the food stafe dollars are going to non citizens, correct,
Speaker 2: which is crazy, correct, it's crazy correct. So our compassion
Speaker 2: is bankrupt in our country. And it's to the Democrats
Speaker 2: that designed this. It's a feature, not a bug. I mean,
Speaker 2: they designed the invasion of our country and they're mad
Speaker 2: that we're trying to turn it off. So that's a
Speaker 2: lot of what this fight is about. And I think, look,
Speaker 2: in the meantime, there are Americans who need food stamps.
Speaker 2: They do need the assistance, and it's designed to be
Speaker 2: there as a safety net because you know, God forbid,
Speaker 2: anyone could run into a time of trouble or need
Speaker 2: and then your friends and family are there, of course directly,
Speaker 2: but you've got a government program that says, yeah, your
Speaker 2: whole community is there. We don't want you to stay
Speaker 2: that way. But it's meant to be a hand up,
Speaker 2: not a snare to trap you in a system of dependence.
Speaker 2: And so we need to make it work better. But
Speaker 2: in the meantime, it isn't going to work at all
Speaker 2: if we don't get the.
Speaker 3: Votes, so you bring it up.
Speaker 1: Fifty three percent of food stamps go to non citizens,
Speaker 1: and a good chunk of those. I know for my
Speaker 1: years working in the Public Defender's office here in Hamilton
Speaker 1: County that these things are also currency. So if you're
Speaker 1: issued your EBT card, you issued your so called food stamps,
Speaker 1: you sell them for fifty cents on the dollar to
Speaker 1: make money, to make cash. And if it's a ten
Speaker 1: to twenty percent factor, the cost of foodstamp should be
Speaker 1: less than half of what it is today. But the media,
Speaker 1: what doesn't the media cover this the way you and
Speaker 1: I just did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's rare.
Speaker 2: I mean you'd see like John Stossel or somebody like
Speaker 2: that would occasionally get the truth out on one of
Speaker 2: these programming things. But those kind of spots are rare
Speaker 2: at this point. Main when they did food stamp reform
Speaker 2: back years ago. Of course, it's been undone since then
Speaker 2: because the Democrats got in control of their state and
Speaker 2: undid it. But they put a photo id on food stamps,
Speaker 2: and they started cracking down on the places that we're
Speaker 2: doing just what you say. They'll have a conne store
Speaker 2: or something out there and there'll be you know, a
Speaker 2: little bit of groceries on the store, but the store
Speaker 2: isn't designed to sell groceries. It's designed to process EVT
Speaker 2: cards and fifty cents on the dollar sometimes is optimistic.
Speaker 3: Whatever the I don't know what the black market.
Speaker 2: Rate today is, but I'll bet you Keith favor our
Speaker 2: auditor is because those are the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: our auditor goes after in our attorney general in our state. Look,
Speaker 2: I think our state does a better job than most,
Speaker 2: but the fraud's real. There's a real black market out there.
Speaker 2: People are selling them for money. Yeah, and the big
Speaker 2: big thing is all this inflates grocery prices. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's fair to say grocery prices are higher. So if
Speaker 2: you're going to help somebody, it probably takes more to
Speaker 2: help them, you know, this year than it did in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. But if you look, you know, specific programs
Speaker 2: like that where you might have to make some changes.
Speaker 2: But if you look holistically, if the federal government spent
Speaker 2: the same money that we spent before COVID, we'd have
Speaker 2: a balanced budget. We wouldn't even have deficits. And people go, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we can't do that because inflation. You're like, well,
Speaker 2: let's go back to what causes inflation. When you do
Speaker 2: this massive government spending, it's injecting extra money into the economy.
Speaker 2: And the food stamps is exactly a way. If the
Speaker 2: market price had to cover the forty one million people
Speaker 2: what they can afford to pay for groceries, how would
Speaker 2: groceries not be lower?
Speaker 3: They would be lower.
Speaker 1: Well, an important factor is this that, whether it's food
Speaker 1: stamps or Obamacare, whatever it might be, when the federal
Speaker 1: government gets involved, I can guarantee you that the subsidies
Speaker 1: increase the demand, they raise the prices, causing more inflation.
Speaker 1: There is a less deductibility and more waste, fraud, abuse,
Speaker 1: and increase spending that area. It is guaranteed that's going
Speaker 1: to result. So food stamps will be resolved. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to ask you this question, since if we took
Speaker 1: the budget from twenty twenty increased it by inflation, we'd
Speaker 1: have a balanced budget today. But we're spending about i
Speaker 1: don't know about forty percent more forty five percent more
Speaker 1: in the federal government than we spend in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: with less results. And so instead of reforming the system,
Speaker 1: even you Republicans keep saying, well, let's keep the same system.
Speaker 1: We'll kick the can down the road for another year.
Speaker 1: Well we'll give you the same Biden budget, and the
Speaker 1: Democrats do won't even vote for that. And so make
Speaker 1: clear this point. If we spent justin for inflation, the
Speaker 1: same amount of money we spent in the twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty twenty cycle, we'd have a balanced budget today, not
Speaker 1: having to borrow two trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: Is that correct, That's accurate, and that's the kind of
Speaker 2: agenda that we want to get on. And that's where
Speaker 2: Russ voted at omb put out the president's budget. And
Speaker 2: look in the meantime without us taking action, you look
Speaker 2: at what russ vote is pairing back and what he's saying, Look,
Speaker 2: we need to furlow these people, and these people need
Speaker 2: to be at work today. It's going to line up
Speaker 2: with what the president's budget is. This is the priority,
Speaker 2: this isn't the priority. And so in a way they've
Speaker 2: got an open hand. But in the long run, yeah,
Speaker 2: the people that are at work today will eventually get paid,
Speaker 2: but but they should get paid today. And that's a
Speaker 2: bill that we put on the floor in the Senate.
Speaker 2: Republicans put on the floor in the Senate just to
Speaker 2: try to break the logjam in the Senate to get
Speaker 2: to sixty votes, and of course then it would have
Speaker 2: to come back to the House because it'd be changed,
Speaker 2: but we would pass it easily. And this is if
Speaker 2: you're essential enough to be at work this week. Surely
Speaker 2: the payroll clerk is essential enough to be at work
Speaker 2: and you can get paid on time. But Democrats voted
Speaker 2: that down, and you know they don't want to fund
Speaker 2: the whole government, and then they don't want to park
Speaker 2: the fund. The paired down quote posential part and the
Speaker 2: fact that people run into suffering, whether it's because they
Speaker 2: don't get their paycheck on time, or the food stamps
Speaker 2: aren't mailed, or contracts aren't being let all these kinds
Speaker 2: of things that we need for the federal government to do.
Speaker 2: Catherine Clark, who's the Democrat Whip, one of the senior
Speaker 2: leaders for Democrats in the House, she says this suffering
Speaker 2: is part of their leverage, so they know that these
Speaker 2: are going to be consequences, and they're counting on this
Speaker 2: in their mind. It's going to make people want to
Speaker 2: pressure Republicans to fold and concede to this one and
Speaker 2: a half trillion dollars wish list that isn't going to happen.
Speaker 2: So they're going to fold. The matter is how long,
Speaker 2: and so we've offered some alternatives where we could just
Speaker 2: try to do it purely with Republicans, but this is
Speaker 2: part of what they want too. They wanted to break
Speaker 2: the filibuster rule but for Joe Mansion and Kristen Cinemon
Speaker 2: they would have broken it in the Senate now, and
Speaker 2: Republicans feel like that's a decent safeguard to make sure
Speaker 2: that there is some sort of bipartisan consensus in governing
Speaker 2: the country. Democrats are ready to abandon it, and they
Speaker 2: want to take They want Republicans to take the blame
Speaker 2: for breaking it, but they want it broken.
Speaker 1: Well, the Democrats want chaos. Now next year they'll run
Speaker 1: on a campaign slogan of chaos and democratic behavior calls
Speaker 1: to chaos, and I think many Americans don't understand that fact.
Speaker 1: A little bit of statistics indicate that one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million Americans rely upon employee are sponsored insurance you
Speaker 1: have medical care. And according to that number, on hundred
Speaker 1: and six million Americans like here here at the Death Star. iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: Most of our employees are on employer sponsored plans, and
Speaker 1: those on employer sponsored plans say seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: Americans say their coverage they receive through their employer is acceptable.
Speaker 1: It's not the best, not the worst, but it's acceptable.
Speaker 1: Twenty two million Americans are on Obamacare, and those individuals
Speaker 1: get subsidies in the government directly and indirectly. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about Marjorie Taylor Green, MTG. She makes about
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year. The
Speaker 1: great bulk of that income comes through her job as
Speaker 1: a US congressman in Georgia, about twenty five thousand. She
Speaker 1: has three children. She gets Obamacare subsidies. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me why someone making about a quarter million dollars a
Speaker 1: year has the federal government paying part of their premium?
Speaker 3: Can you tell me that? Well, here's the thing. They
Speaker 3: don't ever publish it.
Speaker 2: Everyone says Republicans should or Congress should have the same
Speaker 2: healthcare as everyone else. Well, if we did that, we'd
Speaker 2: have employer sponsored care, and that's used to be how
Speaker 2: Congress work. We had the same health care plan that
Speaker 2: federal employees do you know you're employer. Federal government employees,
Speaker 2: not just Congress had essentially the same benefits plan. But
Speaker 2: back when they were pushing Obamacare through, they said, oh well,
Speaker 2: then Congress should have Obamacare. So we are on the
Speaker 2: DC Health Exchange. And I will tell you, look, I
Speaker 2: had better health care at the small business in manufacturing,
Speaker 2: and it was a pain in the butt. The health
Speaker 2: care system is broken, but Obamacare is breaking it worse
Speaker 2: because it was designed to do that. And yes, Congress
Speaker 2: is suffering under Obamacare. It isn't the greatest. We got
Speaker 2: a high deductible plan six thousand dollars on top of
Speaker 2: premiums that are on average about four or five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a month more than what we would be paying
Speaker 2: for the same kind of plan as a federal employee.
Speaker 2: Make it make sense.
Speaker 1: Well, according to the study, I see that if you're
Speaker 1: a family of four. Hardly anybody's a family of four anymore.
Speaker 1: But if you're a family of four, you have to
Speaker 1: spend approximately twenty seven thousand dollars a year with deductibilities
Speaker 1: before you get any coverage at all. Twenty seven thousand
Speaker 1: is five or six thousand dollars per person. A family
Speaker 1: of four indicates about twenty twenty five twenty six thousand
Speaker 1: before anything kicks in. How's that a good plan?
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: It's not a good plan. It's not a good plan.
Speaker 2: And look, I was talking with a financial advisor back
Speaker 2: years ago and it was probably I don't know, four
Speaker 2: or five years after Obamacare passed, and he goes, why
Speaker 2: don't you have why don't you have health insurance companies
Speaker 2: as an ETF? And I go, I really don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't really looked at this closely. And he goes,
Speaker 2: he goes, well, you need to add that, because here's
Speaker 2: how they're going and if you look at their share price,
Speaker 2: it's been almost vertical, just like health insurance costs.
Speaker 3: So the health.
Speaker 2: Insurance companies are making amend and that's who these subsidies
Speaker 2: are going to in their COVID subsidies. So the plus
Speaker 2: up the Democrats. They couldn't make them permanent. They didn't
Speaker 2: have the votes to do it on a party line
Speaker 2: basis when they did it back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: So they made them so they expire, and because they
Speaker 2: couldn't even get it across the finish line, so now
Speaker 2: they want Republicans to deliver what they failed to do
Speaker 2: in their own right.
Speaker 3: But this was for a pandemic.
Speaker 2: Press release wise, but on the back end, it was
Speaker 2: just basically the extortion money to pis say to the
Speaker 2: health insurance companies, hey, if we give you this straight
Speaker 2: pipe of extra cash, will you hold the.
Speaker 3: Premiums down a little bit?
Speaker 2: And that's essentially the play now, and the insurance companies
Speaker 2: are cooperating with it. They're starting to mail out notices
Speaker 2: to say, oh, you know, if you don't pay the
Speaker 2: protection money, your premiums are going to double.
Speaker 1: So this is money directly from the taxpayer into the
Speaker 1: pockets of Obamacare insurance companies. We all know the big
Speaker 1: three or four names, and they get a direct pipeline
Speaker 1: of money from the Congress every year in order to
Speaker 1: encourage the insurance companies to hold down the premium increases
Speaker 1: that Tony Bender pays for as a taxpayer.
Speaker 2: That's the plan that you're starting to catch on to
Speaker 2: what Obamacare is about and what these.
Speaker 3: Subsidies are for.
Speaker 2: And it's just absolutely crazy, and so Republicans aren't going
Speaker 2: to go along with it. And in part to make
Speaker 2: sure that Republicans don't go along with it. Speaker Johnsonson,
Speaker 2: just stay out of town. Don't be compromising with these guys,
Speaker 2: because we usually have you know, maybe what President Trump
Speaker 2: is called pannikins that will run to the mics and
Speaker 2: be ready to compromise with Democrats at a whim and
Speaker 2: say no, no, we're not for this. Don't change your
Speaker 2: principles here. There are things that we do agree on
Speaker 2: and we can work together, but we're not gonna work.
Speaker 2: There's never been a Republican vote for Obamacare. I mean,
Speaker 2: McCain famously failed to get rid of it right, but
Speaker 2: he didn't vote for it. And now they want, for
Speaker 2: the first time ever, Republicans to run out and say, oh,
Speaker 2: we can't wait to do more obamacareh the crazy position.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: The great majority of us receive healthcare through our employers,
Speaker 1: and most of us like it. Government controlled healthcare means
Speaker 1: less choice, high deductibilities, less comp petition, and lower quality,
Speaker 1: which is the heart and soul of the democratic approach
Speaker 1: to legislation. Write those four things down. So many other issues,
Speaker 1: so little time. By Warren Davidson, Congressman. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on the Bill Cunningham Show, and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: But don't cave, don't give in, don't listen to Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green. Let's have assystem based upon laws of supply
Speaker 1: and demand. Got lower premiums, better quality, Get rid of Obamacare.
Speaker 3: It stinks.
Speaker 1: Congressman, once again, thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show.
Speaker 1: And you're a great American.
Speaker 2: Thank you always an honor. GeV bless you and all
Speaker 2: your listeners.
Speaker 1: God bless America. News coming up, you're home of the Bengals.
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