Speaker 1: This is Peter Schweitzer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
Speaker 1: are filling in for Sean on the Sean Hannity radio show.
Speaker 1: He's getting some well deserved rest, and we are tracking
Speaker 1: events on Capitol Hill where it is Christmas chaos in
Speaker 1: the Capitol. They are apparently right now getting ready to vote.
Speaker 1: They may already have started to vote on the third
Speaker 1: version of this bill. The first two, of course, were
Speaker 1: shot down. This is planed C and Eric, this third
Speaker 1: version apparently is going to provide government funding through March,
Speaker 1: is going to provide disaster relief and pharm assistance. It
Speaker 1: is not going to get rid of the debt ceiling issue,
Speaker 1: which was the problem with the previous bill. So we're
Speaker 1: going to track that and in a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: we're going to have on Senator Rand Paul, who is
Speaker 1: in the middle of all of that chaos and craziness.
Speaker 2: You talk about Christmas chaos in the Capitol, which I
Speaker 2: just want to point out. You know, you're a best
Speaker 2: selling author and you and I host the podcast together
Speaker 2: called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer, so you do
Speaker 2: have some broadcast experience, but to drop the triple alliterative
Speaker 2: on national radio Triple c An. It's impressive, and I
Speaker 2: just want to acknowledge that in front of everybody. But
Speaker 2: it is actually quite chaotic. You know, you're the one
Speaker 2: that pointed out we're actually in a weird spot where
Speaker 2: last night with the vote, you had Elizabeth Warren agreeing
Speaker 2: with Donald Trump. Yeah, you had thirty eight members of
Speaker 2: the House disagree, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: we're having a new vote. One of the members of
Speaker 2: Congress that disagreed Nancy Mace, we spoke to last hour,
Speaker 2: and she said that one of the problems that they
Speaker 2: have is that they are actively lied to. Those are
Speaker 2: her words about what the US Senate can and cannot
Speaker 2: do in terms of the House. Can they take up
Speaker 2: these single subject bills? She says, we are told that
Speaker 2: they cannot do that. So one thing we will ask
Speaker 2: Rand Paul about is, hey, are you prepared to take
Speaker 2: more than one vote to keep the government open if
Speaker 2: it means that, you know, we don't have to pass
Speaker 2: a bill that increases spending, no matter how many pages,
Speaker 2: whether it's a fifteen hundred and forty seven or one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixteen. Nancy Mace's point was the pages went down,
Speaker 2: the spending stayed the same. Seems to be the sticking point.
Speaker 2: What I want to know from you, Peter Schwatzer, You've
Speaker 2: spent a career documenting the ways in which members of
Speaker 2: Congress use positions of public power for personal financial gain.
Speaker 2: Of all the things that were in that fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: page bill, the thing that jumped out to both of
Speaker 2: us was the idea that Congress was trying to vote
Speaker 2: itself a pay raise. What was your reaction to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, and this
Speaker 1: is the problem. There are no incentives, really no incentives
Speaker 1: for a member of Congress to limit the federal budget,
Speaker 1: federal spending, and there are very few incentives to avoid
Speaker 1: trying to figure out creative ways to self and enrich. Now,
Speaker 1: they don't want to do it in public, they want
Speaker 1: to try to hide it. They embed it, and they
Speaker 1: do it in a way that is hard to track.
Speaker 1: So it's not going to necessarily say a forty percent
Speaker 1: pay raise. What it's going to say is this law
Speaker 1: is this legislation is going to amend a previous issue
Speaker 1: when it comes to how much members of Congress are
Speaker 1: paid and that's how they get the pay raise, and
Speaker 1: that is the inherent problem. So I applaud Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: I applaud Chip Roy and some of the other people
Speaker 1: who set on principle you know what, No, we have
Speaker 1: to stop spending money. And this is going to be
Speaker 1: the challenge, I think for Donald Trump, because every American president,
Speaker 1: even Ronald Reagan, who was the president I grew up on,
Speaker 1: the president that I love very hard to get presidents
Speaker 1: to stop spending money because it helps you look good,
Speaker 1: You're helping your constituency, you're helping the country, It sort
Speaker 1: of helps the economy boom. The problem is you are
Speaker 1: passing down debt for the next generation. So this is
Speaker 1: going to be an early indication of how much progress
Speaker 1: of any we're gonna make on that topic.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that you use that metaphor, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: you've made the point, and we've made the point on
Speaker 2: our podcast and elsewhere. That's spending, largely government spending, our money,
Speaker 2: tax dollar spending is on autopilot, right And part of
Speaker 2: the problem with that is there are very few incentives
Speaker 2: to keep you from doing it, Like zero who's in
Speaker 2: favor of you not spending money It's the example I
Speaker 2: like to use is if you decide to pay off
Speaker 2: your house, ye what you know, no one makes more money.
Speaker 2: If you decide to pay off your house, pay off
Speaker 2: your mortgage. You know, the bank wants you to have
Speaker 2: the loan, your financial advisor wants you to keep the
Speaker 2: money in the market. So no one's making money if
Speaker 2: you do that. And what's interesting now about this moment
Speaker 2: is the reaction on social media to what they try
Speaker 2: to do actually suggests that there might be an incentive
Speaker 2: to rain down spending because for the first time the
Speaker 2: American people via social media channels, because of Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and because of the mandate that we now have with
Speaker 2: him and Vivicrimswami, there is a political incentive to do
Speaker 2: it because that seems to be what the American people
Speaker 2: are supporting.
Speaker 1: There is, there is, and look, I think dose is great.
Speaker 1: I think having two outsider smart businessmen who are running
Speaker 1: this is a great way to do it. Here's the
Speaker 1: fundamental problem, though, Eric, if you look at the numbers
Speaker 1: of our federal budget, if you were to cut the
Speaker 1: work of the federal government in half, which is probably
Speaker 1: not going to happen, it's going to be more like
Speaker 1: ten to twenty percent. Even if you cut the federal
Speaker 1: workforce in half, it's going to put a minor dent
Speaker 1: in the deficit. The vast majority of spending by our
Speaker 1: federal government is on entitlement programs. It's fixed. And while
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Donald Trump has come out in
Speaker 1: favor of it, Elizabeth Warren has come out in favor
Speaker 1: of getting rid of the debt ceiling. And it seems
Speaker 1: this ridiculous, archaic thing that every once in a while
Speaker 1: you have to vote to raise the debt ceiling. It's
Speaker 1: literally the only time members of Congress actually have to
Speaker 1: talk about federal spending. The rest of the time they don't.
Speaker 1: So I'm not in favor of getting rid of it.
Speaker 1: It seems ridiculous. It's just kind of is the government
Speaker 1: going to shut down? Is it not going to shut down?
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, it seems, but it's the only time they
Speaker 1: actually have to address the fact that they are spending
Speaker 1: us into oblivion.
Speaker 2: Are you concerned that Donald Trump seemed to support something
Speaker 2: that would have suspend that discussion, that one kind of
Speaker 2: crux where you actually have to have a hard conversation
Speaker 2: for the next two years and given his track record previously. Look,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump did a lot of things really well. You
Speaker 2: and I were both very supportive of the idea of
Speaker 2: his reelection. But the reality is is that if there's
Speaker 2: one thing that maybe wasn't great under Donald Trump, and
Speaker 2: it's consistent with every president, spending did not go down.
Speaker 2: I mean that the deficit did not go down, the
Speaker 2: debt did not go down. This is a moment to
Speaker 2: have a hard conversation with the American people. But what
Speaker 2: is positive is we seem to be having it together.
Speaker 2: And you know, you use the word chaos. We made
Speaker 2: the point in the first hour. Chaos is a good thing.
Speaker 2: This is a healthy thing. This is actually what democracy
Speaker 2: is supposed to look like. We were told that democracy
Speaker 2: was on the ballot, and we vote for Joe, we
Speaker 2: vote for Donald Trump, and you know, that's the actual threat.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden is the one that was going to save democracy.
Speaker 2: And then unfortunately he like had to take a nap,
Speaker 2: and so he went away, and then here comes Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris and then somehow the person who received no primary
Speaker 2: votes was the one that was going to defend democracy.
Speaker 2: And so unfortunately, right or actually fortunately, Donald Trump did
Speaker 2: win and as a result, we actually this is what
Speaker 2: democracy and action really looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And look, I mean I
Speaker 1: think Donald Trump wants to get rid of the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling because he's a businessman, and he says, this is inefficient.
Speaker 1: Why do we need to do this? This is kind
Speaker 1: of a rote thing for us to be doing. But
Speaker 1: I think that rote thing is absolutely necessary. I hope
Speaker 1: that he's going to reverse course because when he announced
Speaker 1: his support for that, Ye, those on the left, Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: the Americans Prospect, which is a very left wing publication,
Speaker 1: they said Trump is offering us the deal of a lifetime.
Speaker 1: They have wanted to get out from under the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling forever because they don't believe that debts and deficits matter,
Speaker 1: and of course it does. All you have to do
Speaker 1: is look at our federal budget. We are now going
Speaker 1: to be get set next year to be spending more
Speaker 1: money as a federal government on paying interest on our
Speaker 1: debt than we're paying on national.
Speaker 2: Defense, which is not a thing you hear. And that's
Speaker 2: another thing that unfortunately the American people are lied to.
Speaker 2: And that's another thing that we have spent time talking
Speaker 2: about in this program. There's reported in the Wall Street
Speaker 2: Journal that showed how extensively the Biden administration efforted to
Speaker 2: lie to us about how weak Joe Biden was. You
Speaker 2: and I our last podcast episode, which you can find
Speaker 2: at the drill down dot com, was about Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: and Bill Clinton's new memoir and the lies he's telling,
Speaker 2: Yeah in his book about kind of actually you because
Speaker 2: some of your great reporting was in this book, Clinton Cash,
Speaker 2: and it was about how much money Bill Clinton made
Speaker 2: and how much you know, how much money that don't
Speaker 2: the foundation raked in when Hillary was Secretary of State,
Speaker 2: And like there's a Washington Post review that says, oh no,
Speaker 2: there's all been debunked. And even though donations to the
Speaker 2: Clinton Foundation dropped ninety three percent after she stopped becoming
Speaker 2: to presidential candidate and was no longer secretary of State.
Speaker 2: So you know, we've been lied to on a regular basis,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately, you know, that's actually the fight it needs
Speaker 2: to happen. It's not about the dead ceiling, it's not
Speaker 2: about spending. It's about can you continue to lie to
Speaker 2: the American people. And that's where we have a brand
Speaker 2: new tool at our disposal. And I do think it
Speaker 2: is the new Trump administration with Elon Musk's support, because,
Speaker 2: to quote him, the media is no longer the gatekeepers
Speaker 2: like everyone else at the media, and each lie gets
Speaker 2: called out for the falsehood that it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what do all these stories have in common?
Speaker 1: You know, the Clinton and the Clinton scandals, what happened
Speaker 1: with the Bidens, the issue of Joe Biden's cognitive ability
Speaker 1: or lack thereof. In every single case, you had mainstream
Speaker 1: media acting as gatekeepers, trying to prevent people from having actual,
Speaker 1: real information that they have a right to know about,
Speaker 1: that they deserve to know about. And the news organizations
Speaker 1: are supposed to report on those days I think are gone.
Speaker 1: You now have with Twitter acts. The debate over this
Speaker 1: budget is the one that is absolutely at the center
Speaker 1: point of the conversation. That's a Twitter acts.
Speaker 2: So, Rand Paul, we thought we were going to have
Speaker 2: it five ten. It turns out there's an other debate happening,
Speaker 2: not just on this program, but there's a debate happening
Speaker 2: on the Senate floor, and Rand Paul is actually in
Speaker 2: the middle of it right now.
Speaker 1: So he you mean, he's picking sitting on the Senate
Speaker 1: floor to talking to me. I'm shocked.
Speaker 2: I often am shocked. Ironically, we talked about Clinton cash.
Speaker 2: I want to give Rand Paul a hard time for
Speaker 2: getting us in trouble by leaking some of those revelations.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, we are talking about the federal spending
Speaker 2: and the efforts of Dog and we have a caller,
Speaker 2: a John, who wants to talk about what exactly that
Speaker 2: could look like. John from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: There, Hey, fellows, I really hope when they're tankering the
Speaker 3: budget they're not going to take away those critical tax
Speaker 3: deductions for our sex club sees.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, Well everybody's got their pet project, right.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's the holiday season, John, you know, and everybody's
Speaker 2: got unwined a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, but here's the thing when
Speaker 1: it comes to all these debates, and this is the
Speaker 1: problem why cutting money is so difficult. It's cutting money
Speaker 1: because everybody has a constituent, see right. And so when
Speaker 1: you say we're going to cut this program and it's
Speaker 1: going to be two point five billion dollars, whether it's
Speaker 1: what John wanted or something else, you are now going
Speaker 1: to have that industry rising up and all they have
Speaker 1: to do is pick up a few powerful members of
Speaker 1: Congress to make that sort of go away. So the
Speaker 1: exciting thing about the conversation with Doge, with the Veck
Speaker 1: and with Elon Musk is that we are having this
Speaker 1: conversation that going to come up with really smart ideas
Speaker 1: and smart solutions. The reality is they're very easy. There
Speaker 1: are very few easy solutions that can just take effect
Speaker 1: without Congress having to vote for it. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to get this through Congress. There's a razor thing
Speaker 1: Republican majority, and we've already seen there's some Republicans that
Speaker 1: are willing to, you know, let's say, go off the reservation.
Speaker 1: So it's not going to be as easy as it sounds.
Speaker 1: But you've got to keep fighting the fight because it's
Speaker 1: worth fighting for.
Speaker 2: Is that another Elizabeth Warren reference? Just checking anyway, We're
Speaker 2: going to continue to have the difficult conversations, sometimes about
Speaker 2: topics like John Ray, sometimes about other people you know,
Speaker 2: and other compromising positions. Let's just say, but that's a
Speaker 2: conversation we continue to like to have with you. Thank
Speaker 2: you for joining us on your Friday, the last Friday
Speaker 2: before the Christmas holiday, and we appreciate Sean giving us
Speaker 2: a chance to talk about the work we've done on
Speaker 2: our drill Down podcast. We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 2: He's Peter Schweitzer. I'm Eric Eggers. You can find our
Speaker 2: work at the drill Down dot com. And we're back
Speaker 2: on the Sean Handy Show after this break.
Speaker 1: This is Peter Schweizer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
Speaker 1: are filling in for Sean Hannity. We do the drill
Speaker 1: Down podcast. We would love for you to check it out.
Speaker 1: We are tracking a number of stories, including the vote
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill. We're going to be joined by Senator
Speaker 1: rand Paul we hope at the bottom of the hour.
Speaker 1: He's actually on the Senate floor right now. Also tracking
Speaker 1: the story in Germany, this horrific story in maud dee
Speaker 1: Burgh where apparently a car was driven through a Christmas market.
Speaker 1: There are numerous fatalities, eighty people injured. It was an
Speaker 1: attack and they have now apparently arrested a Saudi man
Speaker 1: who is fifty years old. He's apparently a doctor who
Speaker 1: was there on a permanent residence permit and they believe
Speaker 1: that he is the individual that's behind this attack. They
Speaker 1: are saying it is a loan attack. That's what they
Speaker 1: believe at this point.
Speaker 2: And to me, one of the startling things about this
Speaker 2: story is apparently there was some disturbance yesterday. There was
Speaker 2: tension between people in the German market and a group
Speaker 2: of migrants, and there was you know, some a public
Speaker 2: a fray if you like. And the point that people
Speaker 2: are making who are commenting on this tragedy, because you've
Speaker 2: got anywhere from two to eleven people being reported dead,
Speaker 2: eighty people injured, as you noted, But while we in
Speaker 2: America can see videos of the car which is grotesque
Speaker 2: and horrific, just careening through this crowd of people, people
Speaker 2: in Germany and in Europe could not share this same
Speaker 2: video wow, because of censorship laws in case it was
Speaker 2: presented or portrayed as something as being anti migrant. And
Speaker 2: we've seen other reports of censorship law keeping people from
Speaker 2: commenting and people are being held accountable for social media
Speaker 2: posts in Europe. It's a very different experience there than
Speaker 2: it is for us in the United States, where you
Speaker 2: and I can sit here and host the program and
Speaker 2: criticize the President of the United States and talk about
Speaker 2: how many migrants might be deported. Moving forward, on Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Those are freedoms we enjoy still in this country that
Speaker 2: others in the world do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's the other thing that strikes me in this
Speaker 1: And of course this is one individual. It's not indicative
Speaker 1: of everybody. But you know, apparently there was this issue
Speaker 1: that happened yesterday and we don't know who started and
Speaker 1: what happened, and it's terrible, but one individual decides that
Speaker 1: he's going to take it out on a bunch of
Speaker 1: other innocent people that were probably not even involved in
Speaker 1: that confrontation. And it just speaks to what is evil.
Speaker 1: And you know, they are terrible things going on in
Speaker 1: the Middle East right now, innocent people that are dying.
Speaker 1: But you look at what the Israelis do to They
Speaker 1: target the perpetrators, the individuals that are the terrorists, the
Speaker 1: people that are actually victimizing and killing people. They go
Speaker 1: to great lengths to avoid tangential casualties they do, unfortunately
Speaker 1: happen when these perpetrators hide behind innocent people. But in
Speaker 1: this case, the guy is looking to take out as
Speaker 1: many innocent people as possible. It's terrible.
Speaker 2: As an excellent point, it's an excellent point about horrific tragedy.
Speaker 2: And the loss of human life. Unfortunately, that is a
Speaker 2: profound distinction that is oftentimes not made in the way
Speaker 2: those issues are covered by the media. We're going to
Speaker 2: continue to try to make more excellent points. In the
Speaker 2: last thirty minutes of the show. He's Peter Schweizer on
Speaker 2: Americ Eggers This Sean Handy Radio show'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Sean Handy Radio Show. My name
Speaker 2: is Eric Eggers. I'm joined by author Peter Schweitzer. We
Speaker 2: co host a podcast called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.
Speaker 2: We're talking about lots of different stories, the things that
Speaker 2: are happening right now, and we're very excited right now
Speaker 2: to be joined by US Senator Rand Paul, who just
Speaker 2: came from i think, giving a speech on the Senate floor.
Speaker 2: Senator Paul, can you give us the latest in this
Speaker 2: ongoing discussion over whether or not and how we should
Speaker 2: continue to fund the United States government?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you know, I was proud of conservatives
Speaker 4: yesterday stood up in the House and said that an
Speaker 4: unlimited debt ceiling where you can spend as much as
Speaker 4: you want with no dollar limit for two years. So
Speaker 4: that's just not fiscally conservatives. So most of these guys
Speaker 4: and men and women were in the Freedom Caucus, but
Speaker 4: they stood up, they were fiscally conservative and said we
Speaker 4: won't vote for that. So they voted down the unlimited
Speaker 4: debt ceiling idea. But today there's still another vote going
Speaker 4: on and it'll be coming over to the Senate soon
Speaker 4: and it'll be a continuing resolution that means we will
Speaker 4: continue to spend money at the same rate as we
Speaker 4: have been all year. But that same rate has led
Speaker 4: to a two trillion dollar deficit this last year. So
Speaker 4: I think continuing spending at the same rate without reducing
Speaker 4: spending it's a terrible idea. But it's worse than that.
Speaker 4: They added one hundred billion dollars that they will borrow
Speaker 4: for disaster. They added another thirty billion they're going to
Speaker 4: borrow for farmer subsidies. And then they also this week
Speaker 4: in the Senate voted for an expansion of Social Security
Speaker 4: by two hundred billion dollars, even though so Security is
Speaker 4: on its way to bankruptcy and actually currently spends more
Speaker 4: than it takes in. So it isn't a good week
Speaker 4: to be for fiscal conservativesm Yes, conservatives are standing up
Speaker 4: and fighting, but we're losing. The swamp is winning the
Speaker 4: big government, Republicans are spending and borrow more money, and
Speaker 4: the Democrats are happily going along with all of it.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing, Senator for Paul that I've always
Speaker 1: appreciated about you, which is what you say is what
Speaker 1: you vote. And the problem is there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the Republican Party who talk like they
Speaker 1: are fiscal conservatives, but they don't actually end up doing that.
Speaker 1: Is this going to get easier when we have a
Speaker 1: Republican House and a Republican Senate and Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: the presidency or are we going to have this continued
Speaker 1: problem with Republicans failing to actually live up to what
Speaker 1: they promised the American people they would do.
Speaker 4: You know, in many ways, we've met the enemy, and
Speaker 4: it's to us. I mean it's within the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: The Democrats are of no value. They will not lie
Speaker 4: to you. Though they don't care about the debt. They
Speaker 4: believe in this modern monetary theory that you can just
Speaker 4: print money at the Fed forever and buy whatever you want.
Speaker 4: Republicans go home to the Rotary and the Chamber of
Speaker 4: Commerce and Lions Club, and they tell you how they
Speaker 4: hate big government and they want to balance the budget,
Speaker 4: and they vote for all the spendings. So it's about split.
Speaker 4: This week we had to vote on expanding soial Security,
Speaker 4: but SOID Security this year lost forty billion. So you know,
Speaker 4: all the payroll taxes we pay, and we pay a
Speaker 4: ton of payroll taxes, we spent forty billion more giving
Speaker 4: soci security benefits than we brought in in taxes. So
Speaker 4: what we did is this bill. Not me, I voted
Speaker 4: against it, but about half of the Republicans. I think
Speaker 4: twenty four of us voted against No. Twenty five of
Speaker 4: us actually voted against us. In twenty four voted for him.
Speaker 4: But by expanding so security by two hundred billion, that
Speaker 4: means the deficit yer this year, instead of being forty billion,
Speaker 4: will be sixty. So they've increased the social security and
Speaker 4: deficit by fifty percent, and it's running out of money
Speaker 4: and we'll be out of money by twenty thirty three.
Speaker 4: So it's a perpetual fight, and it really is people
Speaker 4: need to identify, and in Republican states they need to say,
Speaker 4: you know, is my senator, is my congressman conservative? Or
Speaker 4: is he really part of this wall.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that it's not been a good week to
Speaker 2: be a fiscal conservative, and I say this sort of
Speaker 2: tongue in cheek, but sort of seriously, is it ever
Speaker 2: a good week to be a fiscal conservative? I mean,
Speaker 2: Mitt Romney ran on this platform to you know, to
Speaker 2: bring back fiscal restraint in twenty twelve, and he lost soundly,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem like we've kind of taken that
Speaker 2: issue seriously since then. It is this something that you
Speaker 2: think we have given up on as a country or actually,
Speaker 2: do you feel like the fact that in the last
Speaker 2: week people started to point out some of the ridiculous
Speaker 2: spending measures that were in that original bill, that fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred and forty seven page bill, and they highlighted how
Speaker 2: bad that was. Did that give you any hope at all?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, Vivek and Elon had brought a lot
Speaker 4: of attention to government waste. I've been talking about it
Speaker 4: for a decade and it's easy to find the waste.
Speaker 4: But they're drawing good attention to it. But that the
Speaker 4: battle's just getting started, so we have to get rid
Speaker 4: of it. And I'll give you another example. So a
Speaker 4: lot of the science way, so called science. Let's say
Speaker 4: a million dollars spent studying Japanese quail to see if
Speaker 4: you give them cocaine, are they more sexually promiscuous on cocaine.
Speaker 4: That usually draws laughter because people said, that's ridiculous. You
Speaker 4: had to make that up. Now it was a million dollars.
Speaker 4: It came to the National Science Foundation. Well about a
Speaker 4: year ago, big government Republicans passed a bill called the
Speaker 4: Chip Sacked, which subsidizes big chip manufacturers like Intel. So
Speaker 4: Intel's a probably nearly a trillion dollar company and it's
Speaker 4: getting government subsidies. But it also doubled the size of
Speaker 4: the National Sizence Foundation that has studies on the Panamanian
Speaker 4: frog to see if the country frogs have a maten
Speaker 4: called in the you know, the city frogs. I mean
Speaker 4: it goes on and on. I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 4: insane that a million point five spent on If you
Speaker 4: take a selfie of yourself while smiling and then look
Speaker 4: at it later in the day, will that make you happy?
Speaker 4: My favorite one is from a while back where they
Speaker 4: wanted to find out what makes you more aggressive tequila
Speaker 4: or gin? And you all know the answer. Come on.
Speaker 4: But they had an experiment and they said codfish gin
Speaker 4: and they said the other half of the codfish tequila. Now,
Speaker 4: I don't know how you get a codfish to drink tea.
Speaker 4: They did.
Speaker 2: It happen very carefully.
Speaker 4: And you are right at tequila tequilax ressive than people too.
Speaker 4: But you know it's just that insanity. But then Republicans
Speaker 4: go along with doubling the size of that. That's the downside.
Speaker 4: You want to hear the plus side, We do lower taxes.
Speaker 4: We agree on this regulation. We most of us appreciate
Speaker 4: of the power of capitalism and appreciate the wealth and
Speaker 4: prosperity that is dragging everybody up. I mean, the statistics
Speaker 4: are amazing. How even despite the inflation of the last
Speaker 4: three or four years, the overall historical trend is that
Speaker 4: the middle class is moving up and moving up even
Speaker 4: into the upper class. So there is good news about
Speaker 4: capitalism that we need to talk about. But there's some
Speaker 4: you know, we have to keep our eyes open and
Speaker 4: not take her eye off the ball as far as
Speaker 4: the spending goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree with you on that. We want
Speaker 1: to play a clip for you. We had Nancy Mason
Speaker 1: earlier and this is what she was told by the
Speaker 1: leadership in the House as far as what the Senate
Speaker 1: could or couldn't do involving the spending legislation that's coming
Speaker 1: for Just listen to Nancy Mace and give us your
Speaker 1: thoughts whether this is true or not true.
Speaker 5: I said in Eating Sick with groups of every public
Speaker 5: where the lie was stated that if we do single
Speaker 5: subject bills tonight, do a clean CR, do a separate
Speaker 5: a disaster relief fill in, a separate farm extension or
Speaker 5: farm type bill, that the Senate could only take up
Speaker 5: one bill. That is a lie. There is nothing limiting
Speaker 5: the Senate from taking up three bills. We also as
Speaker 5: a House could do three separate single subject bills and
Speaker 5: then do what's called a mervh a erv. And what
Speaker 5: the merv would do is we would do this three
Speaker 5: separate voats and then combine the bills together as they
Speaker 5: were sent over to the Senate, so they only have
Speaker 5: one vote. So like, there are many options in vehicles
Speaker 5: in ways that we can go about this. But again
Speaker 5: Republicans are lied to. Because they were lied to, they
Speaker 5: got scared, and so it sounds like we're going to
Speaker 5: do the CR again. The cr that we did last night,
Speaker 5: but no debt ceiling. So it's just the same thing
Speaker 5: a different year.
Speaker 1: So Senator Paul, is that true? The Senate can only
Speaker 1: handle one bill at a time.
Speaker 4: The rules in the Senate are are Caine byzantine and
Speaker 4: hard to understand. But without consent, and I'm one of
Speaker 4: the ones who is flying the ointment off often. If
Speaker 4: I don't consent to let them bring up three bills tonight,
Speaker 4: they can't because it takes a while, you have to
Speaker 4: go through several votes, procedural votes. It slows things down,
Speaker 4: and that can be good if you're preventing bad stuff,
Speaker 4: and most of the stuff where they're passing is bad.
Speaker 4: But there's a chance I will give them consent tonight.
Speaker 4: And the leverage I have of blocking these bills is
Speaker 4: that I have two amendments that they'll defeat me on,
Speaker 4: but I will bring forward the American people will know
Speaker 4: that we care some of us. I will put forward
Speaker 4: something called the Government shut Down Prevention Act, and if
Speaker 4: I get a vote on that, and they let them
Speaker 4: bring all the bills up tonight, even though I will
Speaker 4: vote against the bills. The Government shut Down Prevention Act
Speaker 4: says when there's not an agreement. When there's an impass
Speaker 4: and government's going to shut down, it doesn't shut down.
Speaker 4: It just continued funding, but with six percent less funding.
Speaker 4: And that's a pretty significan and cut and would probably
Speaker 4: draw people back to the negotiating table because they don't
Speaker 4: like the idea of cutting. For me, it would be
Speaker 4: great because we're at impasse all the time, and I
Speaker 4: think cutting six percent would be a good idea, which
Speaker 4: is consistent with my penny plan, which would balance the
Speaker 4: budget in five years. I have another bill that says,
Speaker 4: for this two hundred billion dollar expansion of Social Security,
Speaker 4: that you could pay for it by gradually raising the
Speaker 4: age of eligibility three months per year for twelve years,
Speaker 4: so by the time you get to twenty thirty six,
Speaker 4: it would be it would go from sixty seven to seventy.
Speaker 4: And people like, oh, you don't like old people too.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, I aspire to be an old person.
Speaker 4: I want to save it for what I am there.
Speaker 4: I want to save it for all the rest of
Speaker 4: the next generation. And you can't save it if you
Speaker 4: don't fix it, and you can't just keep adding expenses.
Speaker 4: So this will be the first time if we get
Speaker 4: this vote tonight on raising the age that this will
Speaker 4: have been offered maybe ever on the Senate floor, maybe
Speaker 4: since nineteen eighty three and eighty three. I think they
Speaker 4: did it too legislation, so it must have come up
Speaker 4: in a This may be the first time we voted
Speaker 4: on it since eighty three, and I will lose, but
Speaker 4: it'll be it'll presage or give for notice to the
Speaker 4: people what's coming into this vote will have to happen again.
Speaker 4: Eventually we'll have to be done well.
Speaker 1: This is one of the things I appreciate about you,
Speaker 1: Senator Paul. You really come up with some amazing policy ideas.
Speaker 1: So instead of doing the same thing over and over
Speaker 1: again and expecting a different result, you come up with
Speaker 1: some amazing reform ideas. I know you're a supporter of
Speaker 1: the idea of single subject bills, so you don't get
Speaker 1: these monstrous trains that kind of go through the legislative
Speaker 1: process where they add a lot of pork. Another great
Speaker 1: idea that I don't know if you actually introduced legislation,
Speaker 1: but you talked about the fact of having transparency if
Speaker 1: an amendment is offered to a bill, actually have some
Speaker 1: explanation of who actually wrote the bill? Was that a lobbyist?
Speaker 1: Who was it that actually wrote that regislation? And that
Speaker 1: to me seems to be the path we have to
Speaker 1: go forward to in a Trump term, where you have
Speaker 1: the House and Senate actual structural reform, because if we
Speaker 1: keep doing the same thing, the Democrats at some point
Speaker 1: are probably going to come to power again and we're
Speaker 1: going to keep having these same problems over and over again.
Speaker 1: How optimistic are you with the new administration, with the
Speaker 1: new House and Senate, that we're actually going to get
Speaker 1: changes to the manner in which we do things, not
Speaker 1: just the cuts, which of course are important as well.
Speaker 4: Well. I think you bring out a good point as
Speaker 4: far as that the process makes a difference in what
Speaker 4: ultimately the result is. For example, our founders intended that
Speaker 4: they're in history suggests that there would be individual appropriation bills.
Speaker 4: There's twelve different departments of government, there's twelve different spending bills.
Speaker 4: If you pass eleven of them and then the twelfth
Speaker 4: one is the Treasury, and you say, I don't want
Speaker 4: eighty thousand new RS agents. We control the House of Representatives,
Speaker 4: why wouldn't they pass ten or eleven of these? That
Speaker 4: way ten to twelve of government is still open, and
Speaker 4: say to the Department of Treasury, you can rot in
Speaker 4: hell if you don't get rid of these IRS agents
Speaker 4: are people for this, and we're going to fund you
Speaker 4: at eighty percent of the level. We're going to retrench
Speaker 4: all that money for RS agents and we're not going
Speaker 4: to do it. Pick some one item you're going to
Speaker 4: win on instead. That never happens. We never win, We
Speaker 4: never exert the power of the purse because what happens
Speaker 4: is the Democrats the Republicans will put something forward of
Speaker 4: the Democrats will say we don't like that, and then
Speaker 4: the Democrats say, you shut down the government, and the
Speaker 4: repuman say, we're afraid to do that. But the thing is,
Speaker 4: you don't have this big sort of cataclysmic shutdown of
Speaker 4: government if you can pass some of the spending bills,
Speaker 4: get them off the table. So what you're discussing is
Speaker 4: one twelfth of the government coming to a halt for
Speaker 4: a while while we forced to compromise. But the way
Speaker 4: I perceive what happens is even when we take over
Speaker 4: the House, like right now we have the House, how
Speaker 4: much what percentage of the power of the person we're
Speaker 4: using zero, not ten percent. We're not getting fifty percent
Speaker 4: of it want so the bill that put forward this
Speaker 4: continued resolution one hundred billion for disasters, thirty billion for farmers,
Speaker 4: and another two hundred billion for SOB security. That's not
Speaker 4: a compromise. They've already sold themselves out before we even
Speaker 4: get to the Senate. So it's not like they're waiting
Speaker 4: in the Senate wants something worse. They've already produced something
Speaker 4: so bad, so big in spending and so much debt,
Speaker 4: that the Senate's going to pick it up in overpass
Speaker 4: it tonight. Also, not me, the Democrats and the big
Speaker 4: government Republicans will.
Speaker 2: It's really fun to hear you, Senator Paul, because you
Speaker 2: know you're just coming off the Senate floor. You're talking
Speaker 2: to the American people. You're telling them what votes are
Speaker 2: going to happen. You're saying we're going to lose. But
Speaker 2: here's why we're doing it. I think, to be honest,
Speaker 2: this is exactly the kind of transparency and invitation to
Speaker 2: the American public into the process that I do think
Speaker 2: our founding fathers wanted in our country is better because
Speaker 2: of it. So thank you for taking the time to
Speaker 2: join us and giving people some insight into the process,
Speaker 2: not just today but moving forward. Thank you very much
Speaker 2: for the time today, sir, Thank you as Senator Ran
Speaker 2: Paul he is author Peter Sweitzer, I am Eric Eggers.
Speaker 2: Together we host the podcast called The Drill Down, which
Speaker 2: you can find at the drill down dot com. And
Speaker 2: we'll be right back on the Sean Handity Radio Show
Speaker 2: right after this.
Speaker 1: And Eric Eggers, we've been covering for Sean Hannity on
Speaker 1: the Seawan Handerity Radio Show. We thank you Sean for
Speaker 1: giving us the opportunity to sit in front of this
Speaker 1: microphone and talk to your audience. We hope you're having
Speaker 1: a RESTful time over the holidays. And thank you Linda,
Speaker 1: producer Linda for guiding us every step of the way.
Speaker 1: We have done this, I think now five times, and
Speaker 1: we appreciate it every single time we have a chance
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, farbait for me to correct you my boss here
Speaker 2: at the Government Accountability Institute, But this is actually our
Speaker 2: sixth time doing it, and each and every time we
Speaker 2: really cherish the opportunity to speak directly to the American
Speaker 2: people about like really important issues. And today we talked
Speaker 2: about this pending fight over how to fund the government.
Speaker 2: We also talked about the way that the government's gotten
Speaker 2: used to being able to lie to us, the American people.
Speaker 2: One point to make in all the discussion about hey, hey,
Speaker 2: what's the House doing, what's the Senate doing? And we
Speaker 2: know what Donald Trump supports, you know who, we haven't
Speaker 2: heard from who Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: And that's just the real thing. And that's because we
Speaker 2: don't know what he's doing where he is, and that
Speaker 2: continues to be a massive scandal American history, one that
Speaker 2: we were happy to be able to experience with you,
Speaker 2: with the American people today.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, Merry Christmas, Happy Hontike and everybody. We appreciate you
Speaker 1: taking the time to listen to us. God bless and
Speaker 1: happy New Year.
Speaker 2: Merry Christmas, America. Thanks again, Sean Handy Show is over.