Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is a verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson
Speaker 2: with you, and the Senate has sent the debt ceiling
Speaker 2: package to Biden's desk with the default threat just days away.
Speaker 2: In translation, the sausage has been made in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Senator, you just left that vote.
Speaker 2: We are doing this after the vote took place, and
Speaker 2: I want to start off with asking you this. This
Speaker 2: couldn't get done without Republicans in the Senate. If the
Speaker 2: Republicans all stayed together, they wouldn't have gotten the sixty
Speaker 2: votes needed. So which Republicans went with the Democrats to
Speaker 2: get this deal done?
Speaker 3: Well, Ben, that's exactly right. You and I are sitting
Speaker 3: here at is eleven fifty two pm on Thursday night.
Speaker 3: I just came from the Senate floor about a half
Speaker 3: hour ago. We were voting on the debt ceiling, and
Speaker 3: we were voting on this deal, the Joe Biden deal
Speaker 3: that he negotiated with Kevin McCarthy. It's a lousy deal.
Speaker 3: We've talked about it quite a bit on the podcast.
Speaker 3: And the interesting thing is in the Senate, Republicans had
Speaker 3: it entirely within our power to kill this in order
Speaker 3: for this to pass, the Democrats had to get sixty votes.
Speaker 3: If they didn't get sixty votes, it wouldn't pass, which
Speaker 3: means if forty one Republicans stood together, we could have
Speaker 3: killed it. Actually, five Democrats voted no tonight, so if
Speaker 3: those five had held their ground, just thirty six Republicans
Speaker 3: could have stood together and killed it. But sadly that
Speaker 3: didn't happen. So who are the Republicans that voted for
Speaker 3: this deal? Well, in alphabetical order, John Boseman from Arkansas,
Speaker 3: shelleymore Capito from West Virginia, Susan Collins from Maine, John
Speaker 3: Cornyn from Texas, Jony Ernst from Iowa, Chuck Grassley from Iowa,
Speaker 3: John Hoven from North Dakota, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Jerry
Speaker 3: Moran from Kansas, Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma, Lisa Murkowski
Speaker 3: from Alaska, Mitt Romney from Utah, Mike Rounds from South Dakota,
Speaker 3: John Thune from South Dakota, Tom Tillis from North Carolina,
Speaker 3: and Todd Young from Indiana. Those are the Republicans that
Speaker 3: joined with Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden in adding four
Speaker 3: trillion more in debt in exchange for ultimately what were
Speaker 3: very small spending cuts.
Speaker 2: So the question I have to ask you, and I
Speaker 2: know each of them probably had different reasons, but what
Speaker 2: did they get out of it? I mean, that's a
Speaker 2: long list. What was the reasoning for some of them
Speaker 2: to just say, hey, screw it, we're going to go
Speaker 2: along with us.
Speaker 1: What did they get in return for that vote?
Speaker 3: Well, in my time in the Senate, Republican leadership always
Speaker 3: votes with the Democrats to increase debt, to raise the
Speaker 3: death ceiling. Usually they get nothing for it. Usually this
Speaker 3: fight is Republican leadership of the Senate saying we must
Speaker 3: increase the death ceiling and get absolutely zero for it.
Speaker 3: So I guess, you know, we should pause and reflect
Speaker 3: that at least there were some modest concessions in this
Speaker 3: deal Joe Biden and the White House. Initially, Biden's position
Speaker 3: was he wouldn't negotiate, he would make no concessions whatsoever.
Speaker 3: That was so patently unreasonable that House conservatives forced House
Speaker 3: leadership to negotiate for something, And so there were some
Speaker 3: concessions in this. But look, in the Senate, Senate Republican
Speaker 3: leadership's view is every time there's a fight over a
Speaker 3: death ceiling, every time there's a fight over a continuing resolution,
Speaker 3: every time there's a fight over an omnibus, one hundred
Speaker 3: out of one hundred times, Republican leadership does what the
Speaker 3: Democrats want. Look, in December, Mitch McConnell led the fight
Speaker 3: to pass a massive omnibus that funded Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 3: Nancy Pelosi's priorities. And I want you to think about
Speaker 3: how insane that was. So December was one month after
Speaker 3: the November elections, when Republicans had just won a majority
Speaker 3: in the House. So we knew there was a House
Speaker 3: majority coming in in January, and yet in December it
Speaker 3: was Republican leadership of the Senate that said, before those
Speaker 3: crazy Republicans show up and take a majority in the House,
Speaker 3: let's fund the entirety of the federal government through September thirtieth.
Speaker 3: Let's take nine months out of twenty twenty three off
Speaker 3: the table. Now, mind you, this Republican majority of the
Speaker 3: House only gets two years, So if you take nine
Speaker 3: months of the first year off the table, it means
Speaker 3: zero of the Republican spending priorities can get enacted into law.
Speaker 3: Because Senate Republican leadership decided it was their job to
Speaker 3: ensure that Nancy Pelosi, on our way out the door,
Speaker 3: got another two trillion dollars in spending. So that's a
Speaker 3: dynamic that has played out a long time, and sadly,
Speaker 3: it's a dynamic that played out tonight.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about the Democrats because you
Speaker 2: mentioned there were some Democrats that voted no.
Speaker 1: The question is why did they vote no?
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Speaker 2: Ben for thirty five percent off center you mentioned. And
Speaker 2: it's really infuriating when you hear that Republicans voted for this,
Speaker 2: including the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But there were
Speaker 2: some Democrats that voted no. That may shock people. And
Speaker 2: after there's a big vote like this, we always have
Speaker 2: a large number of new listeners that come in. They say, hey,
Speaker 2: I just want to know what happened, right. They may
Speaker 2: not do politics every day, but it's important. They want
Speaker 2: to know how we got here. So explain in detail
Speaker 2: why these Democrats would actually vote no.
Speaker 3: Well, the final vote was sixty three to thirty six,
Speaker 3: So there were thirty six nos of the nose, five
Speaker 3: of them were Democrats and thirty one of them were Republicans.
Speaker 3: So the five Democrats who voted no were Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders, Jeff Berkeley, Ed Markey, and John Fetterman. They're
Speaker 3: basically the far left wing of the Democrat caucus in
Speaker 3: the Senate. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure.
Speaker 3: Why they voted no, other than I assumed they didn't
Speaker 3: want to make any concessions. The fact that there were
Speaker 3: even slight modest concessions that Biden made for the unabashed
Speaker 3: socialist wing of the party, presumably those concessions were too much. So,
Speaker 3: for example, there are modest work requirements that are added
Speaker 3: to food stamps and welfare. I am assuming I don't
Speaker 3: know this. You'd have to ask Elizabeth Warren, you'd have
Speaker 3: to ask Bernie Sanders why they voted now, but I'm
Speaker 3: assuming their view is that even the tiniest bit of
Speaker 3: work is unacceptable. They want people not to have to
Speaker 3: work at all, and able bodied adults to be able
Speaker 3: to stay at home and receive welfare payments in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: I don't understand that reasoning. I genuinely my brain doesn't
Speaker 3: work that way. I was always raised in a house.
Speaker 3: If you don't work, you don't eat, and that I
Speaker 3: think work is good for you. I think work is
Speaker 3: good for the soul. I think it builds responsibility. I
Speaker 3: think it builds self respect. I think just being dependent
Speaker 3: SAPs your dignity and SAPs SAPs your self respect. But
Speaker 3: for the far left, for them, if they see value
Speaker 3: and work, they never vote that way. It is possible
Speaker 3: that one of the reasons they voted no is there
Speaker 3: was a component of this bill that green lighted a
Speaker 3: natural gas pipeline in West Virginia that was a payoff
Speaker 3: to Joe Mansion. It is possible that the left wing
Speaker 3: Democrats that was a reason they voted no. This was
Speaker 3: a payoff. Remember last year, Joe Manchin voted for the
Speaker 3: misnamed the deceitfully named Inflation Reduction Act. That was a
Speaker 3: massive bill that was trillions in spending and subsidies for
Speaker 3: Green New Deal policies and taxes on oil and gas,
Speaker 3: and it hammered by the way coal miners in West
Speaker 3: Virginia hammered oil and gas producers. It hurt West Virginia.
Speaker 3: But Joe Manchin voted yes nonetheless, and part of the
Speaker 3: Dally cut with the White House and Schumer is that
Speaker 3: he would get this pipeline in West Virginia approved. Well,
Speaker 3: this was the payoff, the payoff for his vote, and
Speaker 3: so maybe that was part of the reason the Democrats
Speaker 3: voted no. I don't know for sure. What I know
Speaker 3: is five d's voted no, which means if we had
Speaker 3: thirty six rs who voted no, this would have been
Speaker 3: defeated tonight in the Senate.
Speaker 2: For people that don't listen all the time that may
Speaker 2: be tuning in to this episode because of this vote,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people in the past that have
Speaker 2: heard what you've said about this moving forward, as we
Speaker 2: were keeping up dated last week and the week before,
Speaker 2: But explain why specifically you said no and you voted no.
Speaker 2: From your perspective as a center from Texas.
Speaker 3: Well, it's very simple. This does not solve the problem,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't even make a very significant improvement in
Speaker 3: the problem. Let's step back for a minute. Let's look
Speaker 3: at this with a broader perspective. Let's go back to
Speaker 3: two thousand, two thousand, wasn't that long ago? It was
Speaker 3: twenty three years ago, in the year two thousand. Do
Speaker 3: you know where our national debt was in two thousand?
Speaker 1: Men?
Speaker 2: Nowhere near what it is now. And it's scary to
Speaker 2: see how much the numbers gone up. I don't know
Speaker 2: the exact number from two thousand, but it was nothing
Speaker 2: remotely close to what we've accomplished now.
Speaker 3: Well, that's accurate. And two thousand, the national debt was
Speaker 3: five trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Five wow.
Speaker 3: Now, in two thousand, a president that you and I
Speaker 3: both worked for, George W. Bush, got elected. Bush served
Speaker 3: for eight years. At the end of his eight year term,
Speaker 3: the national debt had grown from five trillion dollars to
Speaker 3: ten trillion dollars. In two thousand and eight, Barack Obama
Speaker 3: became president. When he became president, the national debt was
Speaker 3: ten trillion dollars. Eight years later, the national debt had
Speaker 3: grown to twenty trillion dollars. So pause and reflect on
Speaker 3: that for a moment. It had taken forty two presidents
Speaker 3: over two hundred years to build five trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then two presidents, one Republican and one Democrat, in
Speaker 3: six steen years quadrupled the debt increased it from five
Speaker 3: trillion dollars to twenty trillion dollars. Now, what happened next
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, the national debt is twenty trillion dollars. Where
Speaker 3: are we today, thirty two trillion dollars. That's from twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen to five and a half, less than six years
Speaker 3: we've gone. Just go back to two thousand. From two
Speaker 3: thousand to today, we've gone from five trillion to thirty
Speaker 3: two trillion dollars. What we are doing is wildly irresponsible.
Speaker 3: It is bankrupting our country. Now, let's go back to
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. Again, let's put this in perspective. Twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: total federal budget four trillion dollars. That's what the federal
Speaker 3: government spent. What was total federal tax revenue three point
Speaker 3: three trillion dollars. So we had, if you can do
Speaker 3: some quick math, we had a seven hundred billion dollar deficit.
Speaker 3: That was the amount that our expenditures exceeded revenues. Now
Speaker 3: fast forward to today today, what we're looking at right
Speaker 3: now is a total federal budget of about six point
Speaker 3: six trillion dollars. Now, think about it. In six years,
Speaker 3: we've gone from four trillion to six point six trillion, Like,
Speaker 3: Holy cow, that is massive. Now, what's happened to tax revenues? Now,
Speaker 3: remember in twenty seventeen we passed the historic tax cuts.
Speaker 3: When we passed the tax cuts, all the Democrats, most
Speaker 3: of the lying corporate media said, this tax cut is
Speaker 3: going to cause federal tax revenues to plummet. It's going
Speaker 3: to cause massive deficits, massive debt, this is disastrous for
Speaker 3: the federal budget. Well, the nice thing about making predictions
Speaker 3: is when time passes, you can see if those predictions
Speaker 3: are true or false. We now know that every single
Speaker 3: Democrat who said that was full of crap. We now
Speaker 3: know that every media outlet that said that was telling
Speaker 3: you something that is patently false. Why because every year
Speaker 3: since twenty seventeen, after the tax cuts, every single year,
Speaker 3: federal tax revenues went up and up and up, and
Speaker 3: they're now just under five trillion dollars from three point
Speaker 3: three trillion. That's a massive increase in federal tax revenue.
Speaker 3: Why the economy grew. The tax cuts helped small businesses,
Speaker 3: help job creators, created jobs, and that generated much more
Speaker 3: tax revenue than did the higher rates before the tax cuts. Now,
Speaker 3: getting nearly five trillion dollars in tax revenue is great
Speaker 3: until you realize that the total budget is six point
Speaker 3: six trill million dollars, so five doesn't get you there.
Speaker 3: That's how we've gone from twenty trillion in debt to
Speaker 3: thirty two trillion dollars in debt. And what does this
Speaker 3: thing do. It green lights another four trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1: And if you.
Speaker 3: Contrast it, look the House, what it initially passed, was
Speaker 3: a bill that would that would raise the debt ceiling
Speaker 3: by one and a half trillion dollars. That's a lot
Speaker 3: of money, but it had real and meaningful cuts. It
Speaker 3: had cuts that would have saved a total of four
Speaker 3: point eight trillion dollars over ten years. So that was
Speaker 3: the trade off the House made is is okay, we're
Speaker 3: not going to solve all the problem, but let's have
Speaker 3: real and meaningful cuts and we'll add one point five
Speaker 3: trillion in debt. What this did is it inverted that ratio.
Speaker 3: Instead of one point five trillion in debt, it's four
Speaker 3: trillion dollars in debt, so it's more than double, it's
Speaker 3: almost triple the debt. The initial deal was and what
Speaker 3: is the spending. Well, on the face of it, they're
Speaker 3: claiming it's two trillion dollars, which is less than half
Speaker 3: the four point eight trillion the House had initially, But
Speaker 3: in reality it's much less than that because the bulk
Speaker 3: of that savings is from the out years, where the
Speaker 3: spending cuts aren't mandatory, which means the Democrats are going
Speaker 3: to ignore them and waive them. So at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, Republicans are celebrating, at least Republican leadership
Speaker 3: is celebrating adding four trillion in debt for what will
Speaker 3: prove to be nominal spending reductions. And I promise you tonight,
Speaker 3: right now in the White House, they are popping champagne.
Speaker 3: That should scare the hell out of you.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about the greenlighting and the
Speaker 2: four trillion in new debt because I think it's so
Speaker 2: important that people understand how do we just throw around
Speaker 2: four trillion in new debt and what time period is
Speaker 2: it's going to happen over before I get you to
Speaker 2: in so that though we're talking about the economy, we're
Speaker 2: talking about what's happening in this country.
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Speaker 2: seven the number four gold IRA. Senator, you mentioned greenlighting
Speaker 2: of four trillion in new debt. How quickly are we
Speaker 2: going to spend that four trillion dollars? What's it going to?
Speaker 2: What was the reasoning behind it?
Speaker 3: So that's in less than two years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So the initial bill, the quote limits, Save and Grow
Speaker 3: bill that the House passed, increase the federal debt limit
Speaker 3: by one point five trillion dollars. It was a fixed
Speaker 3: dollar amount, and once you hit the additional one point
Speaker 3: five trillion, you had to come back to Congress and
Speaker 3: get author as AI to go up again. The value
Speaker 3: of the debt ceiling is historically it's proven the only
Speaker 3: effective lever point to force any meaningful fiscal restraint. Well,
Speaker 3: this deal, it doesn't have a fixed dollar amount. There's
Speaker 3: actually not an amount of debt that's authorized. What it
Speaker 3: did instead is it suspended the debt ceiling altogether until
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, until after the election, until January twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five. So based on current spending, that will be
Speaker 3: in excess of four trillion dollars. But the reason they
Speaker 3: did that is they did is the politicians didn't actually
Speaker 3: want to vote for four trillion in debt. They just said,
Speaker 3: oh no, no, we just suspended the debt ceiling, so
Speaker 3: we didn't vote for a dollar amount. That's a way
Speaker 3: to avoid responsibility for what you're voting for. It's also designed,
Speaker 3: by the way, we're going to hit the death ceiling
Speaker 3: again in January of twenty twenty five. Now, what will
Speaker 3: have just happened. We will just had an election in
Speaker 3: November of twenty twenty four. We will be in a
Speaker 3: lame duck session with a bunch of retiring politicians going
Speaker 3: out of office. And this is designed so that in
Speaker 3: December of twenty twenty four, they're going to go back
Speaker 3: and pass another massive spending bill, just like Mitch McConnell
Speaker 3: and Nancy Pelosi did in December of last year. They're
Speaker 3: going to do it again in December of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four trillions more, and they're going to say, if we
Speaker 3: don't do that, we'll default on the debt. This is
Speaker 3: designed to create another crisis, and they pick that date.
Speaker 3: It's not by accident, by the way, we had an
Speaker 3: amendment to shorten that time period, to shorten it to
Speaker 3: November of this year. Of course, the Democrats all voted
Speaker 3: against it. We had a bunch of different amendments one amendment.
Speaker 3: So one of the things House leadership is pitching is
Speaker 3: they say, well, there's some permitting reform here that's really important.
Speaker 3: And the original version of the House Bill had what's
Speaker 3: called the Rains Act, which is a bill I strongly
Speaker 3: support that says any economic regulation that would impose one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars of cost or more on the economy
Speaker 3: has to get an up down vote from Congress before
Speaker 3: it goes into effect. It would be incredibly meaningful regulatory reform. Well,
Speaker 3: of course the White House objected, and so that got
Speaker 3: jettison from this. Instead, there are some modest permitting reforms
Speaker 3: that are in this and regulatory reform of what's called
Speaker 3: paygo to off the set of costly regulations. And guess
Speaker 3: what the bill provides after it says that, it says,
Speaker 3: oh well, the White House can wave them. So, in
Speaker 3: other words, it has a provision that seems really tough.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, this is actually that this will slow down
Speaker 3: massive job killing regulations, except for the fact that they
Speaker 3: wrote into the bill the White House can wave that reform. Now.
Speaker 3: Mike Lee, my good friend, senator from Utah, had an
Speaker 3: amendment to strike the waiver, to say, Okay, if you
Speaker 3: actually have meaningful regulatory reform, don't get Joe Biden the
Speaker 3: ability to waive it. And guess what, every Democrat voted No.
Speaker 3: They said, nope, we want the waiver. And every single
Speaker 3: amendment we considered was voted down. That was by design.
Speaker 3: They wanted to change nothing.
Speaker 1: Because there was a lot of excitement about the amendments.
Speaker 2: I mean, Mike Lee went on TV several others saying
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do in Paul, etc. You know, we're gonna
Speaker 2: do these amendments, and we're gonna hold this thing and
Speaker 2: force their hand. You're saying that Basically none of that worked.
Speaker 3: None of that worked, and none of that worked because
Speaker 3: Number one Schumer whipped the Democrats to make sure every
Speaker 3: amendment was defeated, and McConnell whipped the Republicans to make
Speaker 3: sure every amendment was defeated. Look, the final margin was
Speaker 3: sixty three to thirty six, and at some level that's
Speaker 3: a little bit better than I had expected. But it
Speaker 3: might have even been we might have gotten to thirty
Speaker 3: nine or forty knows. What they were not gonna let
Speaker 3: happen was forty one knows because forty one nos kills this.
Speaker 3: So at some level leadership in both sides was fine
Speaker 3: with people voting no. If we'd gotten the forty one knows,
Speaker 3: Schumer would have gone to the five Democrats voting no
Speaker 3: and twisted someone's arm to switch their voter. McConnell would
Speaker 3: have gone.
Speaker 2: In other words, you would have got a pipeline like
Speaker 2: in West Virginia to buy a vote.
Speaker 3: Basically, well, and I have to say, really, the most
Speaker 3: amusing moment on the Senate floor was an amendment about
Speaker 3: the pipeline. So Joe Manchin, as part of the disastrous
Speaker 3: so called Inflation Reduction Act that actually increased inflation and
Speaker 3: had nearly two trillion in spending last year, he got
Speaker 3: an agreement from Biden and Schumer to approve this natural
Speaker 3: gas pipeline in West Virginia. And it didn't get done
Speaker 3: last year, but it's rolled into this deal now. And
Speaker 3: Tim Kaine, liberal Democrat from Virginia, introduced an amendment to
Speaker 3: strip out Joe Mansions pipeline in West Virginia. And the
Speaker 3: vote was very interesting because the more liberal Democrats voted
Speaker 3: for Tim Kaine's amendment because they hate energy. They hate
Speaker 3: natural gas, they hate oil, they hate any American energy
Speaker 3: produced here unless it's windmills or solar. And what was
Speaker 3: interesting is several Republicans ended up voting for it as well.
Speaker 3: Mike Lee voted for it, Ran Paul voted for it,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of the left wing Democrats stayed silent,
Speaker 3: and they were scared how to vote because they didn't
Speaker 3: want to vote for a natural gas pipeline, but they
Speaker 3: knew that this was the deal cut with Joe Manchin
Speaker 3: and they couldn't undercut that deal. And in particular, they
Speaker 3: were terrified if any amendment got adopted, this bill would
Speaker 3: get set back to the House. If we amended, it
Speaker 3: goes back to the House, the House has to come
Speaker 3: back and vote on it then. And so as we
Speaker 3: went through the vote, the clerk is calling calling the senators,
Speaker 3: and the clerk call the centers alphabetically, and a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of the Democrat centers. Maizie Herono, one of the
Speaker 3: most liberal Democrats there is. When they called Missarno, she
Speaker 3: stayed silent. She was sitting right there. She just didn't vote,
Speaker 3: and it went alphabetically through. Now Mike Lee was leaning
Speaker 3: on me hard, saying, vote yes for Tim Kaine's amendment.
Speaker 3: Let's number one, deny Joe Manchin the benefit of the
Speaker 3: corrupt deal he cut with Schumer. And he said number two,
Speaker 3: if we actually adopt this amendment, this could tank the
Speaker 3: whole bill. And I told him, I said, Mike, look,
Speaker 3: I'm from Texas. We produce a lot of.
Speaker 1: Oil and gas in Texas.
Speaker 3: I am very hard pressed to vote against any oil
Speaker 3: pipeline or natural gas pipeline. That's just there are millions
Speaker 3: of jobs that depend on oil and gas, and I
Speaker 3: believe in American energy. But I did say, look, the
Speaker 3: point about denying mansion the benefit of the corrupt deal,
Speaker 3: that's real. And if this could take this entire deal down,
Speaker 3: I'd be enthusiastically yes. So I told Mike, I said,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what, I'll refrain from voting. I'll just
Speaker 3: sit back and see what happens. I won't vote early.
Speaker 1: And so we went there for pure They don't understand
Speaker 1: how it works. At first.
Speaker 2: You vote like when you're saying alphabetically, if you don't
Speaker 2: say anything, you don't lose the right to vote.
Speaker 1: At the end, right, you can kind of see how
Speaker 1: it plays out.
Speaker 3: Right. So typically a vote is fifteen minutes, although they
Speaker 3: usually run much longer than that, and there's a clerk
Speaker 3: who's sitting there reading from this long skinny card. The
Speaker 3: long skinny card has the names of every senator on it.
Speaker 3: And this is old school. So the House has like
Speaker 3: electronic voting where you put in a card, you push
Speaker 3: a button and it lights up. The Senate is still
Speaker 3: in the eighteen hundreds. The Senate, we still vote with
Speaker 3: a clerk who calls your name and you either say
Speaker 3: out loud yay or nay, or more typically, you just
Speaker 3: do thumbs up or thumbs down. You look him in
Speaker 3: the eye, and they will they will repeat. So they'll
Speaker 3: be like mister Cruse, and you'll look at him and
Speaker 3: you'll do a thumbs up and they'll go, mister Cruz I.
Speaker 3: And with a pencil they will mark you as an eye.
Speaker 3: And so each person they're marking with a pencil as
Speaker 3: the votes are cast. But when they call your name,
Speaker 3: you don't have to vote. So they call mister Cruz
Speaker 3: and you stay silent. They go to the next name,
Speaker 3: they go to the next name, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I decided, all right, I'm going to sit back. And
Speaker 3: it was hysterical watching the Democrats skirm squirm because they
Speaker 3: were like, oh, no, if this thing's about to pass,
Speaker 3: we're all going to have to vote against it, and
Speaker 3: our crazy environmentalists to be mad at us if if
Speaker 3: we vote against killing a natural gas pipeline. Now, at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, very few Republicans were able
Speaker 3: to vote strategically, so a whole bunch of Republicans voted no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: including Mitch McConnell right at the outset No. So, like
Speaker 3: what Mike was trying to do, if we actually had
Speaker 3: effective leadership on our side, we might have whipped everyone
Speaker 3: to vote for Kine's amendment to strip out Mansions deal.
Speaker 3: But our leadership didn't want to do that because then the.
Speaker 2: Democrats they're gonna ask you why though, like you would
Speaker 2: think that would be a no brainer to say, you're
Speaker 2: not gonna get these where, you're not gonna get these deals,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna get to hook people up this way.
Speaker 2: And yet here the Republicans are and the leadership going yeah, no,
Speaker 2: we kind of we're gonna let this happen. In fact,
Speaker 2: we're gonna protect it to make sure it happens. This
Speaker 2: is what drives the American people center insane as obviously
Speaker 2: you know this.
Speaker 3: So Ben I genuinely don't know. But what happened. So
Speaker 3: we got to the end of the voting alphabetically and
Speaker 3: they read it out and there were over fifty one knows.
Speaker 3: And so then two things happened. All the Democrats who
Speaker 3: hadn't voted, they immediately rushed to vote yes. So they
Speaker 3: once it was clear that Cain was going to be defeated,
Speaker 3: that it was Republicans who were going to defeat it,
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of Democrats rushed in and voted yes.
Speaker 3: See yay, I'm a crazy environmentalist. And secondly, actually most
Speaker 3: of the RS, several of the d's who had voted
Speaker 3: no initially switched their vote to a yes once it
Speaker 3: was clear it was going to be defeated. And most
Speaker 3: of the RS, most of the Republicans who had voted yes,
Speaker 3: switched their vote to a no once it was clear
Speaker 3: it was going to be defeated as well. So but
Speaker 3: there was a moment so Democrat leadership was whipping against
Speaker 3: the Cane amendment was whipping in favor of the Joe
Speaker 3: Mansion pipeline. So Schumer voted with Joe Manchin. Schumer's whips
Speaker 3: voted for Joe Manchin. So one of the more liberal
Speaker 3: Democrats who's part of Schumer's whip team voted for it.
Speaker 3: I walked up and said, all right, tell me, have
Speaker 3: you ever voted for a pipeline before in your life?
Speaker 3: And he kind of laughed and said no. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, they're forty nine other states. We could use
Speaker 3: some pipelines too. How about the rest of us? This
Speaker 3: is their love for any other state? And he just
Speaker 3: laughed And the answer, of course, is no. But it
Speaker 3: was an amusing moment on the floor how nervous Democrats
Speaker 3: were that Republicans might actually support this amendment and strip
Speaker 3: out the deal with Mansion, which would mean it would
Speaker 3: force all of them to vote for the pipeline. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: they didn't have to do that, but we came there
Speaker 3: was a moment where it looked like it might.
Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier there's going to be another showdown that's
Speaker 2: going to happen later this year, and I want to
Speaker 2: ask you about that. I also want to ask you
Speaker 2: about the debt. How big of an issue you think
Speaker 2: this is going to be and how big of an
Speaker 2: issue should it be in the twenty twenty four presidential election.
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Speaker 2: Senator, there's another showdown that's going to happen, and people
Speaker 2: are gonna roll their eyes and they're going to say,
Speaker 2: here we go again. How big of an issue should
Speaker 2: that showdown become for the twenty twenty four presidential And
Speaker 2: how big of an issue do you think this debt
Speaker 2: that we are in as a nation right now? Should
Speaker 2: this be the top issue in the presidential election in
Speaker 2: your opinion? And I'm talking about both sides now, I'm
Speaker 2: saying in general for all American voters, how concerning of
Speaker 2: an issue should this rank?
Speaker 3: Well, Look, every conceivable presidential candidate in the Senate voted
Speaker 3: no on this deal. In the Senate. The only two
Speaker 3: Democrats who might conceivably run or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 3: They both voted no. Tim Scott, who's the only Senator
Speaker 3: currently running, he voted no. Any others who had previously run,
Speaker 3: I voted no. Rand Paul voted no. Mark or Rubio
Speaker 3: voted no. Lindsey Graham voted no. Other people who might
Speaker 3: conceivably run. Tom Cotton voted no. Josh Holly voted no.
Speaker 3: Like anyone thinking of running for president votes against this deal.
Speaker 3: By the way, Barack Obama, when he was in the Senate,
Speaker 3: voted consistently against raising the debt ceiling when George W.
Speaker 3: Bush was president and gave speeches on the Senate floor
Speaker 3: about how the fact that we had to raise the
Speaker 3: debt ceiling back when the debt was down below five
Speaker 3: trillion dollars, how it showed how irresponsible the Bush administration was.
Speaker 3: So that dynamic is a very real dynamic if you
Speaker 3: look at the current presidential contenders. Obviously Joe Biden supports this,
Speaker 3: will sign this, and will trumpet this as a big victory.
Speaker 3: If Donald Trump said anything about this deal, I have
Speaker 3: not seen it. I don't know if he's comm editor
Speaker 3: or not, but if he did aware of it, So
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, we'll see how big
Speaker 3: an issue this is in the presidential debate. The incumbent
Speaker 3: president supported it enthusiastically, and uh, you know, we're headed
Speaker 3: towards thirty six trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Don't forget.
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