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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, we are very excited to have him on the program, James Moreland. Proudly serves as Guam's congressional delegate to the 118th United States Congress, and he is the first Republican to win a seat on Guam in nearly 30 years, which is a pretty amazing victory. It's historic. Yeah, absolutely. So, Congressman, first off, welcome to the program and thank you for joining us.
You're welcome. Hi there, Chuck and Sam, and I'm happy to be on Breaking Battlegrounds. That's really a patriotic name there. That's really cool. I'm glad we had this opportunity. And first, I want to say what we say on Guam when we say hello to everybody is Hapa Dei. If you can repeat that back to me, that'd be super cool. Hapa Dei. Hapa Dei. There you go. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Great.
You're welcome. So let's start off with telling people what does Guam's delegate do in Congress? I mean, I think people may under may not understand exactly the full role that you have there.
It's very good. And we are a non-voting delegate as a territory and the other territories similar like us. But we have representation, at least in Congress. And when you said not too many people realize where Guam is at. Well, not too many congressional members realize where Guam is at either. Occasionally, occasionally one of them shows up and worries about it sinking. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. And I did speak with that congressman. So we're going to get him on our radio show back home to kind of reeducate him on that part, too. As suede his fears on the theoretical floating island.
Yeah, yeah. Even though we're continuing to grow and we're so strategically important for the United States, we're not going to sink, right? And we're having a bunch of Marines coming on over from Okinawa to Guam to ensure the national defense of our nation and our territory. My district back home in Guam is well defended for the freedom of the United States of America. Well, and that brings up an important point, Congressman.
Guam has an enormously important strategic role in America's national defense. Can you tell folks a little bit about that, where it is, obviously geography, but also where it is in terms of the Pacific defense of the United States?
We're in the Indo-Pacific area. The headquarters is right now in Hawaii, and then we are the island chains, the first line of defense for the nation from Asia's side, right? And our threats right now being China or the Communist Party of China and North Korea and China.
Specifically, they are defending Taiwan and what they are and what they wish to continue to do with their freedom as well. So strategically, Guangzhou is back way in history. We were occupied by the Spain for over 300 years until the Spanish-American War came. And then we were part of the United States.
for a little while, which was wonderful, until World War II. Again, Guam became very important because of our strategic location. It's about three or four hours away from Japan. But we had shifts. We had Marines there during the time, and we were bombed, and so was Pearl Harbor. But Guam was the only...
U.S. soil as a territory, we are U.S. soil, we are U.S. citizens, that we were occupied during World War II or the entirety of the war there until finally we were liberated by
by the U.S. Marines and the Army too, and that's why we're so much dedicated to our servicemen, and many of our young folks, to include myself, have enlisted into the armed services, and per capita, we had the highest number of enlisted
in the armed services. So we're really dedicated to that. And the United States recognizes our importance strategically, again, from now on, the threat being in this side, in the Peikom area, against the Communist Party of China and also North Korea, too. And then the importance of helping Taiwan
to maintain their relationships with us and a peaceful relationship. So recently, we're still going through it. Actually, we're having this intensive buildup of the Marines back on Guam, which we're welcoming to, transferring from Okinawa to Guam. So it's a huge buildup. There's a
There's thousands, many thousands of Marines coming on over. It's a huge logistical situation going on happening in Nashville. But it needs to happen. And the idea is that we have the defense to deter. We're not necessarily looking at going to war. We want to deter war.
by showing the strength of the United States and with Stronghold being in Guam, the most strategic location that is U.S. soil. We're working along with our allies, too. Let me ask you this question. So Guam was under Japanese occupation for about two and a half years, and then—
The biggest holiday celebration in Guam is July 21st, which is called Liberation Day. So there has to be, you know, most Americans were affected by wars, right? But Hawaii and Guam actually had enemy soldiers attack, but Guam was probably the only U.S. soil that had an occupation, correct? Yeah.
Correct. Correct. Throughout that time. And a lot of bad things happened to the local people from the hands of those soldiers from Japan at that time, which we're still remembering on Liberation Day when we were liberated. My mother was part of that as well. So based on the fact that you – people of Guam and – people think it's far away, but there's still people there who remember these times. Yes.
and the occupation and the terroristic moves by the Japanese. You, as a territory, probably view national security a little bit different than people on the continental United States, right? So things like North Korea continue to threaten people at times, China's adventures. Are people in Guam more up to speed on what's going on in the world, especially national security regarding the United States? Okay.
Yes, yes we are. And as our competitors, if you wish to call it that, to North Korea and Communist Chinese Party are firing their missiles to check their distance ranges of their missiles. They come our way over open waters, but they also have, and we have seen in practice videos, where it displays Guam.
We are a key target for them because we're the most forward U.S. soil. So that is there. We had national news before when there was a threat from Korea to say that the next one is coming to Guam. And they were interviewing our tourists on the beach and just wondering what people are going to do. But we have experience for and the –
or the Mononcos, what we call Mononcos, our seniors there on Guam. Many are still alive who were young teenagers at the time that we call the greatest generation that remember this and help explain this to the younger folks. So that memory is still clear. And we celebrate coming back to the United States on January, I'm sorry, June
July 21st, there we go, the Liberation Day of Guam. So that's a continuous reminder, and we're going to have also a celebration here at D.C. with my office and the Guam Society of America over here, too, to help my other congressmen, congressmembers remember the liberation of Guam as well. So
We are there. The threat is real for us, and we wish it didn't happen, but we know that with the presence of the military, though we are a target, the idea is that we are also a defense, right, and to show our strength to deter us going to war so we can continue fighting.
economically and building our community in a peaceful manner. So, yes, we do recall the war, and we don't want to go through that again. And the importance of the buildup is huge.
high right now, especially in D.C., as we're going through the budget, coming up with the budgetary process. Let me ask you a question a little bit different from this. It takes about 20 hours to get to Guam from D.C. So most Congress people have the...
advantage the luxury of being able to fly home on the weekends a lot of times unless you're you know Alaska or Hawaii how often do you go back to Guam I mean and people don't expect to see you out there every month I'm sure they know this is you know when you go it's a haul it is what do you do what's your schedule like
If I have a full week off, then I can make it back to my district in Guam. It's 20 hours away, right? Not much sleep on the plane. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. And then when you get off, land back home, you feel the warmth of the island and the warmth of the people. But there's not much time to rest because you're also talking to your constituents to ride away. But it's got to be done.
And there are many, several congressmen before me that have done that quite well. Eventually, I'll get used to the routine. But most of the time, you know, my couch in my office, it doesn't feel so bad. I'm really happy with it. Congressman, one thing I note that you've been careful to do, and I like it, and maybe you can expound on it, is you've been very careful delineating between the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, and China. I
I think Americans tend to look on China as a bit of a monolith, but that's really not the case, right? Is that why you're making that distinction or why are you so careful to make that distinction? We want to make sure that it's
So communism deters freedom, right? But people I know inside really want their freedom. And we have many folks from Asia to come on over to Guam. Chinese live in Guam. Koreans live in Guam. Many from foreign countries live in Guam and do quite well and have been there for a long time and go back and forth.
to their home place. So there are good people, and then there's just bad policies. So that's the distinction for myself. It's the bad policies and those with dictatorships that want to keep their fist on the desk and control people. So we want to make sure that we can do good things, right? That's the idea. We continue to do what's right.
but we deter people that oppress their folks, right, from doing good things as well. Because we can solve a lot of things by working together, but we can't do it with an iron fist. We've got to do it the right way. So it's the Communist Chinese Party that I'm not comfortable with at all. But if I can, just go back on the distance from Guam.
One thing which I'm really aggressive on is helping my members understand where Guam is in distance, and that's by inviting them out for congressional delegations to come to Guam. And within the first quarter, I was able to get a good group from the Appropriations Committee under the Military Construction Society.
Right. Congressman, Congressman, we're going to take a quick break here and have you back on. We want to discuss that briefly. Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We're with Congressman James Moylan of Guam. If you don't know where it's at, it's a long ways away from you, but it's the first American soil that the morning wakes up to. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone on the line with us right now. And we're very pleased to have James Moylan, Guam's congressional delegate to the United States Congress. Before we get into the real fun stuff, Congressman, I have to ask you.
How do folks on Guam refer to themselves? Because I'm reading here it says Guamanians, and I always thought it was Guamians. So let's correct the American people on this. Guamanians is great also. And then your Chamorro descent, you can also say I'm Chamorro too, which is our language. The native language in Guam is Chamorro. Okay.
And then one of our terms, and I mentioned earlier, is we always say Hapaday to folks, especially our visitors, too. So Hapaday to you again. And to you. And are most Guamians, are they bilingual? Yes.
I can say at one time we were, but the language is not being shared as much as before. My mother is Chamorro, but at one time I wasn't spoken to in Chamorro. It was English, but when I'm in trouble, she would speak to me in the late native language, and I knew right away I got to do something right. Okay.
Let's talk about, you said you had some members from the Appropriations Committee come to Guam. Yes, I did. Was this a total new experience? Were they surprised? Tell us a little bit about it. For a couple, it was their first time to come on out. But for the senior one that put this together through the Appropriations Committee on the Subcommittee on Military Construction,
That will be Judge Carter, Congressman Judge Carter. That was him getting us out there. And it was very helpful, again, to remind my new members and also to see the buildup as it continues with the
with the military buildup on Guam, just the tremendous distance that we had to go, the tremendous hours of flying that we had to finally get there and crossing the dateline. If you just put to get to Hawaii, most people think that's far. But from Hawaii to Guam, that's another seven and a half hours. So total, it comes out to close to 20 for me coming from D.C.,
And then when you understand that, when you land on Guam and then you get to speak to the different services we have there, the issues that we have there, the cost of living in Guam, because everything is basically shipped in to Guam, the cost of fuel and getting all the supplies out for the military and for all the residents of Guam is tremendous. And then...
And then it's helpful that they understand this. And I'm looking forward to working on a couple more codels to come to Guam as well. So it's been very receptive because Congress now understands even more because our topic is continuous when it comes up. And with the subcommittees, like I'm a part of, is the Armed Services Committee. So I constantly bring up Guam and the readiness with the witnesses that we have when they come before us.
And also Guam is known for where America's day begins. We get the first sunrise. So tomorrow when the folks wake up in Guam or they're already asleep now, when they wake up on Saturday morning and we haven't finished our Friday yet. So it's really interesting. How do you handle constituent service with that? So you're in D.C., you have a constituent in Guam, they're asleep right now.
Does that alter the hours of your office and you when you're in D.C.? Do you sleep? I mean, what I'm getting is you probably don't sleep much. I mean, how do you handle that?
Right. We need communications, of course, with our staff back in Guam. Of course, every congress member has their district offices, too, and so do we back home. And if they need to contact us, they certainly can. We do our messaging. And if it's something we have to talk about, they wake us up. Or likewise, we have to do the same thing.
So they're running the office while we are away. But if there's something important and I need to get on a, like your talk shows here, which I'm happy to do as well, it's usually around midnight or late evening that I can actually do that to talk back home for the early morning programs and then for the afternoon programs too. So it's an adjustment, but somebody got to do it, and I'm proud to do that for my district. Okay.
Congressman, Guam's economy obviously has a lot to do with the U.S. military presence, but what are Guam's major products or exports, imports? What is the Guamanian economy built on? Not much in exports or imports. We do have some locally made stuff, but our economy is built on tourism,
And that's why it's so critical when we have these world situations where things happen in Asia side. It affects us greatly. And we were close to, I think, the two million mark of tourists that we were hoping to come into Guam. We were building more hotels at that time. Is that two million a year?
Right. That's a lot. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And so we were building, we were in part of building more, constructing more hotels so we can reach that point because we were tapped out in hotel rooms. So, but then the COVID happened, right? That affected us too. So we're, it's,
It's critical that depending on what's happening, right, it could really affect us. The other major economy where money comes on in is through the military.
the service and all. And what helped us during COVID, I believe we also had the USS Roosevelt pull into our upper harbor because they needed to play support because they had the COVID situation on the ship. The members of the ship were getting infected and they needed treatment and they needed to dock and they needed to refill and all that. And they still had their readiness issues too. But our governor of Guam welcomed them in and
that was very helpful and that also helped our economy grow too. And now with this continuous military buildup and as we're getting tourists coming on back, we're reducing the restrictions of vaccinated proof of vaccination for those in
Japan coming on over to Guam and Korea coming on over to Guam. We're slowly getting back to the point. It's going to take some time. So tourism and military is our primary income that we do. So I'm glad for that. That's good. Can you tell our listeners what committees you see?
as part of being a congressional delegate, you have one minute left here, but part of being a congressional delegate is you can vote on committee votes, but you can't vote on the House floor, correct? That's correct. So what committees are you on, like with about 45 seconds left? Oh,
I'M ON THE COMMITTEE OF ARMS SERVICES AND ALSO NATURAL RESOURCES. NATURAL RESOURCES TALKS ABOUT THE INSULAR AFFAIRS WHICH DEALS WITH THE TERRITORY. SO ALL VERY IMPORTANT COMMITTEES FOR GUAM ESPECIALLY AS AN ISLAND AND ESPECIALLY AS THE MILITARY BUILDUP COMES THERE. SO I GOT A GOOD VOICE THERE THOUGH NON VOTING ONLY IN COMMITTEES BUT STILL I CAN INFLUENCE MY MEMBERS AND TELL THEM THE IMPORTANCY AND BRING THEM TO GUAM AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.
Congressman, before we end the interview here, and thank you again so much for joining us. We really enjoyed having you on the program. Hope you'll join us again sometime. But how do folks follow you and your work?
I'll just pull up Congressman James Moylan, and I'm sure they'll be able to Google me on that. So we all have our standard members platform there. So just reach out to us that way. And I'm looking forward to talking to all my constituents and answering their questions as well.
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Congressman James Moylan of Guam. We are very, very happy to have you on the program and again, love to have you back sometime. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back in just a moment. Folks, make sure you're tuning in, downloading all our podcasts at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today in this segment, we're honored to have with us Congressman Greg Stupi. He is a congressman out in Florida's 17th congressional district. For our listeners out there, you can catch his interview on Sarasota Radio, 930 AM The Answer. He represents the Sarasota area, Fort Myers, southwest Florida. And sir, thank you for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me. So my first question is more personal. I noticed here on your bio that you graduated in receiving a degree in animal science. Was politics and law always your idea or were you thinking about being a veterinarian?
No, I grew up working on cattle ranches. So I actually went to the University of Florida to get a bachelor's degree in beef cattle science, which I did. And it was actually beef cattle and the Florida Cattlemen's Association and ag policy that got me started in politics in college. When I got to college, I had no aspirations whatsoever to be in politics. Well, that's pretty amazing. I don't think people realize how much cattle is raised in Florida. They always think of the West and Texas.
Yeah, the seventh largest state, I think, in cow-calf production, tenth largest state with cattle numbers. The largest cattle ranch by number of cattle is actually in the state of Florida. So it's kind of interesting. Once you leave the coastlines on both sides, you go inland at citrus and cattle. Absolutely. I remember years ago driving from Miami up to Orlando and driving to the central part of the state and just –
calling a friend and saying, I can't believe how many cattle I'm seeing out here. So it's quite remarkable. So anyway, thank you for joining this show. Thank you for your service. Let's first talk about something that you are sponsoring and something that's become a bit of an issue for the New York Times and others. You have gone and proposed a bill to protect women's sports, and it's called Save Women.
It's National Girls and Women's Sports Day. You have proposed a bill called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. And what this does is allows women and girls a fair playing field in competitive sports by ensuring that school athletics comply with Title X recognition of persons' reproductive biology and genetics at birth. Explain that a little bit to people why this is important. Yeah, so back in the 70s, Congress created Title IX because there was
an impetus on behalf of women that they did not want to compete against men in sports, and they didn't have women's sports. It was, you had the football team, you had the baseball team, and, like, you wanted to go out and compete, and so women didn't think that that was fair for obvious reasons. So in the 70s, Congress created Title IX, which is women's sports.
so that women can compete with women on the playing field from everything from soccer to softball to you name it, the sport. And in the last couple of years, we've seen this attack on women's sports
by the progressive left because they think that anybody that wants to identify as woman and is so-called trans that they should be able to compete with women even though they're biologically men and completely try to demolish what is women's sports and it's actually a sad day in america where you actually have to pass a bill to say that women should be playing women on the sports field and men should be playing men but that's where we're at in our society today and uh
It passed committee this week, so now it should move to the floor. And I think every congressional representative should have to vote on whether they think that biological men should be in high school and middle school girls' locker rooms and all that sort of thing, and really to protect –
the sanctity of women's sports. I had a constituent who lost an Olympic medal because they allowed a biological man to compete with her in the women's category in swimming. So you see it time and time again. Democrats try to dismiss this as not happening. It's happening all the time. You see story after story of it happening in all sorts of different sports. There was just recently a woman talking about
From a weightlifting perspective, now the National Weightlifting Association is allowing biological men to compete with women in weightlifting. Well, we know the outcome of that's going to be. So it's necessary that we get this out there and ensure that Title IX, again, there's a funding mechanism there. So if universities refuse to comply with what we're trying to do, they can lose their federal funding, which is the real stick on this bill to be able to move it through the process.
How do people who go and defend Title IX, which is, I had daughters that played college sports, and it's needed, how do they defend this? What is their argument to you on this? Well, what's interesting is CNN just had a Democrat on going against this bill. And what's interesting is their argument was twofold. One, that this doesn't happen, which is an outright lie. And two, that I am bullying trans girls. Right?
which there's no such thing. It's actually a young boy or an older boy who is wanting to identify as a female to play in whatever activity it is. So that's really the only argument against this. This doesn't happen, and I'm just bullying trans girls, which, again, isn't the case because that trans girl, which is actually a biological boy, can play in the boys' sports. We're not telling them they can't play soccer. We're not telling them they can't play baseball. We're not telling them they can't play football. We're telling them that
You're a biological male. You should be competing with other biological males in sports. And Congress created Title IX years ago specifically for women's sports. To protect women. And now Democrats want to erode it. Exactly. We're with Congressman Stubbe from Sarasota, a rural Floridian. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today, we are honored to have with us Congressman Stubbe from Florida's Congressional District 17, outside of Sarasota, down to Fort Myers. Folks, if you're concerned about your future, if you're concerned about your Social Security check, it's time to start looking for investments that will give a good rate of return. That's why Sam and I recommend to you YRefi.com.
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Congressman, thank you for coming back. You, this week, have had some hearings on Afghanistan and the irresponsible withdrawal that the Biden administration led on that. What have you learned in these hearings? Well, it's very telling when you have the actual mercantile
who was a sniper who was testifying that they had the ability to take out this suicide bomber and nobody gave him the go ahead. People ignored him. That's how chaotic the withdrawal was. And because of the way that Biden's administration, the COD handled this withdrawal, American Marines died.
Countless civilians in Afghanistan died. The Taliban is now with $80 billion worth of our taxpayer-funded military equipment, some of the best military equipment in the world, and now a globally recognized terrorist organization has all of that equipment.
One of the other things that wasn't really brought out in this committee hearing, so I hope they have another one to specifically discuss the attack that after all of this happened, the Biden administration took out 13 civilians, I think it was 13, in a car and then said it was the planner of the suicide bomber when that was actually a complete misrepresentation. So I hope they get into that too as well to show the American people the lies of this administration and the
steps that they will go to to just hand over military equipment to designated terrorist organizations and take action that they know is going to kill American soldiers. And they should be held accountable for that.
My understanding is we left 1,000 American citizens and 200,000 Afghan allies behind. Is that true? Is that number correct? That number is probably close. We still, as you and I are talking today, there are still American citizens left in Afghanistan. And the State Department changes the numbers and won't give you real clear information. But as we sit here talking, we know and they will confirm that there are Americans still stuck in Afghanistan who left.
who want to get back to the United States, but now obviously are beholden to the Taliban. Who knows how many of those people have been killed? Who knows how many of the people who helped us along the way who were our allies in Afghanistan, interpreters, those that worked with the Afghanistan police and army? How many of those have been killed by the Taliban? You're never going to get that information.
But yes, as we sit here today, we don't know the exact number, but there are Americans that wanted to leave that are still stranded there behind enemy lines and have to deal with the Taliban. What do you hope to accomplish in these hearings? Because I think the sad part about this is, is that the national media from your Washington Post to your New York Times, etc., are not going to really focus on the failings of this pullout.
And, you know, they always try to make it sound like you're trying to do a getcha at the Biden administration. But this was a complete failure. It was it was a lack of judgment. And they have abandoned American citizens. What do you hope gets accomplished with these hearings?
Well, one is bringing that fact and that information before the American people, because the Democratic majority, even after all of this happened, who was in charge of the House, did absolutely nothing. And none of this information that came to us this week from that Marine that testified and all the other information that we're getting,
wouldn't have happened if the republicans would take the majority the democrats would continue to not talk about this issue because they don't want attention going to the failure of this administration that yes and so one is getting their the information out and i know that mainstream and leftist progressive media will talk about it but if there's enough testimony they'll be forced to talk about it and then at least
The conservative outlets can get that information out to the American people that, yes, here was a Marine who's testifying under oath that he had the ability to take out a suicide bomber, and his commanders and his administration did absolutely nothing for a very definite threat who killed 13 Americans and countless hundreds of Afghan civilians. Folks, Congressman Stobie was an airborne infantry officer. He served in the U.S. Army. He was also a JAG Army officer.
Congressman, with that background, have you heard from colleagues still in the military, and how do they view this rushed withdrawal?
Everybody that served, especially those of us that served in a combat-deployed environment, either Iraq or Afghanistan, is just devastated and appalled by the decisions and what occurred with this administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan. The weapons and materials and Humvees and Blackhawks and all this that was left to our enemy.
In Afghanistan, on top of the human toll, those people that worked with us to try to secure Afghanistan were left behind. Some of them didn't make it out. We have American citizens that are still stuck there. So the things that you question, I served in Iraq, not Afghanistan, but as a veteran, you question why we served and went over there and did the things that we did, risked our lives to serve our country when you have Biden come in and just completely destroy
completely allow all this equipment to go to our enemy. What did serving in the U.S. Army teach you that you're able to apply to Congress and your public service?
Well, one, it's obviously that service to our nation. And I feel like I'm just extending that service to our nation from going to the military to to Congress. But the other the other part is the things that we can do as members of Congress as it relates to foreign policy, military policy and Veterans Affairs. Like I have a bill that I've been working on the last couple of years. Obviously, the Democrats aren't going to push it through, but.
Republicans will push it through. It would allow veterans that are service-connected disabled to get TRICARE and go anywhere they want to get the health care they need and desire. So to have that background and knowledge of how the military operates, having served, how the VA system works, to be able to take that expertise and shepherd that as a member of Congress for the American people is very, very rewarding. You said on the House Ways and Means Committee,
Tell us what you think about Biden's budget proposal yesterday, which is just a wish list of progressive spending. They increased taxes. They're trying to make it seem like it's deficit reduction, but it's just more government spending. It's just more programs. What are your thoughts about it? Well, it's fascinating that Democrats can say that more spending of your tax dollars actually saves money.
That's like saying if you spend more money out of your checking account, you're going to save more money. And I would think most American people see that that's a complete misrepresentation of what's going on. This is the highest budget in spending in taxes in the history of America. It would actually raise the taxes on small businesses to a rate higher than in the Chinese Communist Party. There's a ton of...
appropriations in there for gender equality and equity, Green Climate Fund. Climate's actually mentioned in the budget like 143 times, so they show what their priorities for the American people is. It's not veterans. It's not Afghanistan and the people that serve there. It's
climate and gender equity and then we're going to raise taxes on small businesses and americans at the highest level in the history of the country and one of the highest levels in the world higher than chinese communist party to spend more money on progressive ideology and progressive progress well i was the wall street journal had a piece out about this today and they said if you add the state taxes on top of what biden's proposing the combined top rate
for high earners in America is 55%. In UK, it's 45%. Germany, 47.5%. Spain, 54%. I don't know how he thinks we can keep having an innovative economy where you're taking so much money from a community that invests.
Yeah, we're not. This is going to destroy small businesses. It's going to destroy and push us into the economic scenario that we have right now, which higher inflation. We're going to after spending 21 trillion. So when I first got elected to Congress, the deficit was 21 trillion. It's
It's now $31 trillion in just a little over four years. Oh, my goodness. That's $10 trillion that has just been put on the deficit. And we have inflation where we have because the Democrats for the last four years have felt like they want to spend like drunken sailors. And now they want to keep spending more money. That is not the solution to the economic challenges that we face in America. Let me take a step back and let's use a practical example. So you have a lot of businesses in the area where you're at in Sarasota.
What does this mean? Let's say you go and you own Ace Hardware. How much is this going to add to their annual tax bill as a small business owner? Well, it takes the percent from like 30-something, from 37 to 39 percent.
It takes the, well, that's Medicare. It takes the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%. The Communist Party is 25%. So what that means is you're going to be paying more in taxes. So if you're an electrical company or you're a plumbing company or you're a small business in my district, you're going to be spending more money on taxes, which means that's less money to hire employees to do expansion.
We have a small local supermarket here in town that after Biden got elected and all of the talk about increased taxes on businesses, they didn't do an expansion that they were going to do in that investment and that expansion because they knew they wouldn't have the overall revenue to be able to do that. So ultimately, it's going to hurt the economy. It's going to hurt jobs. It's going to hurt the American worker because businesses are going to be hiring less people.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Folks, just so you don't know, the Biden proposal plans to raise taxes nearly $4.7 trillion. This is not a deficit reduction plan. And it's going to hurt your bottom dollar. That is just where we're at on this.
Okay, so you're on the House Ways and Means. You're doing these Afghanistan hearings. What keeps you awake most at night about the threats to America? Is it our national debt? Is it China? What do you view our biggest threat that we just got to put our arms around and take care of?
Well, I also sit on the select committee of the weaponization of the DOJ. So you're not sleeping at all. So you're not sleeping at all, basically. Yeah, I mean, that really is... That's honestly the thing that is the most upsetting is you have...
corrupt people at the highest levels of the DOJ and the FBI and our intelligence agencies are using their power to surveil an American citizen, to try to use their power like we saw the FTC. There was a report that we just released where the FTC is trying to go after Twitter because they don't like Elon Musk. I mean, they're using the government for political purposes.
And frankly, that's what's the most upsetting to me, because those agencies were created by Congress and should be doing what's best for the American public, regardless of political affiliation. That's absolutely not what is what is happening. How does that make you feel personally? I mean, you're the son of a sheriff. You served in the military. You served overseas to protect our country.
How does it feel that these people have sworn to serve the American public, to protect the American public, have gotten so involved in this political cabal? I mean, how does this make you feel?
Well, it's very frustrating and angers you, especially when you look at things like what happened on January 6th and what happened with leftist organizations attacking the Department of Interior or all the riots that we saw in federal buildings the year of 2020, and they're being treated differently. So you have a weaponized Democratic DOJ going after individuals who simply walked into the Capitol that day
and throwing the book at them, putting them in solitary confinement, putting them in prison for four years, when people attacked and destroyed and burned down federal courthouses, and they're not even being aggressively prosecuted for similar crimes. Actually, violent crimes are not getting prosecuted. So that's got to be the most frustrating thing, especially for somebody who's
whose family was in law enforcement. You know, we were always taught that the law is blind as it relates to those things, and it's going to be applied equally. And that's absolutely not what has been happening under this administration. We have a minute left here. How do people get a hold of you in your congressional district, your constituents?
Stuby.house.gov. And you go to that website. All of our different social media things are there that you can sign on. You can also sign on to get our weekly emails. So this radio interview will be on that weekly email and every TV hit that I do so that people in my district and throughout the country can keep up to date with what we're doing in Washington. Folks, we will have all that information as well on our various social media as well. With 30 seconds left, Congressman.
Are you optimistic about America? I'm optimistic about what we can do with the Republican majority in the House. Uh,
I obviously wish that we could have taken the Senate as well, but the purse strings come from the House, and I think there's a lot of policy objectives like illegal immigration, things that were going on in the DOJ that we were just talking about that can be dealt with from an appropriation standpoint and push the American dream forward. Thank you. Well, we appreciate your time today, Congressman. We'll hope you join us again soon. Folks, you can learn more about
Congressman, and this interview at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote and on our social media. Have a great weekend. Congressman, thanks a million. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. We now have with us Rick Hess. He is the Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on K-12 and higher education issues. Rick, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. Good to be with you. So what in life...
help you determine that this is the path you wanted to follow as a career, following education issues? Well, you know, I was always fascinated by education. I was a terrible student when I was a kid. Got into one college. And then once I was there, I actually liked school and you just got to read interesting stuff.
So I wound up substitute teaching high school for beer money and became a high school teacher. And I got so frustrated by all the insanity that constitutes teaching in a public school that I wound up going to study it. Got a Ph.D. at Harvard in political science trying to understand how this works.
And ever since, I've just been more and more taken up with trying to understand why this stuff looks the way it does and whether we can't do better. You wrote you did a great report and you have an op ed out at Fox News dot com called If You Want to See Media Bias. Look at how the press covered this crazy Biden handout.
What I've noticed is all the press on it seems to be, well, this just seems fair. It's not based on law. It doesn't really interview people who have already paid their student loans off or parents who saved to pay it. It's just this feels good. This is a nice thing to do. What did you find in your report, your study of this topic?
Yeah. You know, the way you just phrased that struck me and my co-author, Caitlin Eversman, the same way that it's funny if you ever read, say, media coverage of school choice proposals.
It's always why these might be a bad idea, why somebody somewhere thinks they might not be legal. All of the early coverage of student loan forgiveness was, here's how you go get free money from President Biden, even though this hasn't taken effect yet. What we found was we looked at the way five major papers, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and the L.A. Times, covered
covered student loan forgiveness last year from when President Biden first talked about it in May until the elections in November. Between them, they ran about 190 stories. We used what we called stratified sampling to randomly select 100 of those stories. And we weren't trying to say, did that seem fair to us? Because, you know, we got our point of view, too. Instead, we said, let's look at what these reporters are actually doing in these stories. So we
So we looked at all of the quotes in these stories, the 400-odd quotes. We looked at what topics got discussed and didn't get discussed. And what we found, for instance, was about half of the quotes in the stories were from public officials.
Of those, 81 percent were from Democrats. Nineteen percent were from Republicans. Normally, when the media covers these kinds of stories, you find a lot of quotes from experts, especially experts kind of who are explaining why school choice or critical race theory laws are a bad idea. And very few quotes from people who stand to benefit. In this case, what we found was
was only about one out of six quotes came from an expert. Folks who wanted their loans forgiven, either because they were borrowers or because they were progressive activists, accounted for about one out of every three votes. And then when it came to the topics that got covered, we found that the media consistently ignored almost all of the serious concerns that were raised even by centrist and liberal economists.
They do this on everything, though, don't they? I mean, I mean, I mean, you know, it's funny. I am I'm I'm subscription poor. I read everything. I'm a conservative, but I have my subscription to New York Post. I mean, New York Times, Washington, L.A. Times, you have their crazy story this week about admissions to Washington Post. You know, you know, I watch it. I listen to it because I want to hear diverse opinions. I think I can learn.
But, you know, and I so I had people actually direct message me and just tell me, I can't believe you're reading that junk. I said, well, don't you want to learn? And they said, it's all lies. And I told them, I don't think it's all lies. It's just omission. They leave things out. So it's like this story. I'm going to interview people who have student debt. Why should I interview people who saved people who work through school? I'm just going to interview people who have debt.
And, you know, I'm going to give you a sob story. And that seems to be what a lot of the press does now. I know that's not your specialty, but is that a fair characterization of it? It's just the guilt of omission? I mean, I think that's a big, you know, I think it's actually worse than that. I think that's a big part of it. And it's funny because, you know, as a conservative, when I read like you, I read a lot of this stuff and especially in education world, which, you know,
You know, in education world, they think that, you know, former President Obama was a right winger. Yes. Yes. They've got a different view of the world than a lot of people. But it's striking that you raise these concerns and they go, oh, yeah.
you have no evidence of that so one of the things i try to do every so often we did this with critical race theory coverage about two years ago is just take a look at this and i keep hoping that well maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm just reading it with bias and they're actually being more fair than i but i think you're right i think the mission is a huge part of it i think
who they think they should talk to, the kinds of people that they take seriously. For instance, of the 400 odd quotes, about 440, 450 quotes in the 100 stories that we examined, about 115 were from borrowers or liberal advocacy groups that claimed to speak for borrowers. I think if I remember right, only three or four quotes out of the 400 odd were identified as taxpayers or taxpayer groups. So
So, again, it's this imbalance that you just noted. Selection bias. Selection bias. Just selection bias. But I also think there's some other stuff that's a real problem because you think even if you were a biased journalist,
you would just look at who you'd interviewed and you'd say, gosh, I've got four Democrats for every Republican. That's just going to look silly. In a country where the Senate was 50-50, where the House was on a hair's breadth, where there's more Republican governors and Democratic governors, like,
this just doesn't look right. I should call a couple of these folks and just get them in the story. But I think part of it, too, is that there used to be, I think, in an earlier era, an ethos in journalism that you got ahead by understanding the issue we're covering. If you were covering Soviet, U.S. nuclear stuff, part of your job was to understand the number of missiles and
anti-ballistic missile systems. If you were covering schools, a part of your job was to understand where these tax dollars actually came from. I fear today, with all the social media, all the attention to clickbait, all of the pressure to kind of feed the base to the place like the New York Times or the Post, that there's just not a lot of incentive to really understand the ins and outs of student
student loans, to not really understand the HEROES Act that passed in 2003, or why it's legally problematic that the Biden administration is trying to do this. And so there's a lot more upside in just quoting a sympathetic, you know, a sympathetic student borrower. So it's not just who they're not talking to. It's also that they've got a lot of incentive to
to not get into the hard stuff and instead get into the easy stuff, which plays to liberal sympathies. Well, I notice when reporters call me and you have an opinion contrary to them, they want you to justify it. I'm not sure they're making any of these loan borrowers justify why they think taxpayers should just write off the loan, which maybe I'm wrong. I'm not an education expert, but a loan that they had to sign a piece of paper to get.
Right. So it's like mea culpa. Ignore what I thought I was going to do. Yeah. And for your listeners who don't follow this stuff closely, like most normal people, the way the student lending system works is folks are already getting sweetheart rates that are subsidized by taxpayers. So we're
So when President Biden talks about forgiving this $400 billion, these are loans that people already got generous terms. And what most of the coverage ignores is that there's already a whole series of systems in place, stuff like ankle-driven repayment.
where if you are out of work or if you're having trouble repaying or if you're a veteran, there's already a whole bunch of stuff that either reduces or puts your loan on pause or lets you off the hook. So what they're really doing is talking about asking taxpayers to pick up $400 billion in loans for people who chose to take out the loans and now don't want to repay them
And frankly, not only do the reporters not appear to challenge the borrowers when they quote them, but they'll quote borrowers saying things which are simply factually incorrect and they'll run it at face value. And I know every time I get called by reporters at The New York Times or Washington Post, like you're saying, we seem to wind up in these picky debates where they are trying chapter and verse to shake me on points where I'm
I'm pretty darn confident that the preponderance of evidence is with what I'm saying. But they want to say, well, I found somebody at some third rate lobbying group somewhere who claims to have a data point that says something else. And by gosh, they are going to treat that and my body of evidence the same come hell or high water.
Yeah. So shifting a little bit on this topic. So let's give an example to our audience how they handle vouchers. So we're in Arizona where we tape this from. Vouchers are universal here in Arizona now. The press every day out here is hand-wringing. This is the death of children as you know it. I mean, this is just a horrible thing that you're giving these parents options. And as I always tell people,
Look, you could give universal vouchers all across the country. Still two-thirds of the students would go to public school. People like their local school, but that's their choice. And private schools, charter schools encourage innovation.
But do you find that same thing when you're called about vouchers that, you know, you're immediately they want to put you on the defense, you know, not explain the benefits of this. And, you know, I always love how this only benefits rich kids. And it's just not the case. I mean, what is the percentage of kids from low income households that use vouchers? Do you know that number? You know, I mean, right right now, I mean, first off, a lot of the nation's choice programs are limited to low income kids.
So in those places, it's 100 percent. More generally, it depends state by state and community by community. But look, the bottom line is if you're a comfortable family or a well-off family, you already got this covered. When you bought your home, you bought into a good school district or you can afford to send your kids to private school. I mean.
Put, you know, state after state, community after community, the lion's share of folks who stand to benefit from school choice are the folks who don't already have it, which is families that are scraping to get by. Exactly. And that's one thing funny that report you brought a very good point. Reporters don't get there is school choice already for wealthy people. They just pick up a move to a neighborhood of seven digit homes.
Where they can put their kid in a great public school where there's, you know, a great PTA, great parent involvement and moms who can pick them up at school when they're done. They just they don't they don't want to recognize that fact. Yeah. I mean, one of the first things that, you know, a real estate agent will talk about with any family with kids when they go home is how good are the local schools? They always put the school district on the flyer. I've never seen a real estate flyer without a school district on it. And that's not done just for no reason. Right. There's a reason to it. Yeah.
I want to talk about one other thing here before we let you go. It's an idea I have. I just want to get your two cents on it. Um, I think we both can agree that college is expensive. Now I I'm old enough that I could work my way through school. Um, my, both my daughters, um, went to school. They could not have worked their way through there, you know, went to law school and, you know, we stepped up and did it. Now we planned accordingly and we were fortunate. We can plan, but college is just very expensive. Now there's no doubt about it. Um,
Do you see any logic in it if the federal government provided every high school graduate with a voucher that pays the tuition for a junior college for the first two years? And that voucher can be used at a technical school, four-year university, whatever, to give these middle class, low income kids a head start on a higher education and take that money from the Pell Grant budget and other things in the Department of Education, which could probably cover a lot of it, not all of it, a lot of it.
Do you see any merit in that type of idea? Yeah. I mean, in conjunction with with stuff which is going to avoid cost and price inflation. Right. So, you know, for instance, we have we basically have a version of this right now. The Pell Grant, which is basically a voucher for students who are below a certain income threshold in almost any state will cover two full years of community college right now. OK.
So you've got that. Now, you know, does it go high up? Does it go up high enough in terms of families, uh, that are comfortable middle class, but they're still getting hit. I think there's a reasonable debate. Um, the problem is that the higher ed cartel has been really good at taking whatever taxpayers offer up, siphoning it into expanding the bureaucracy, uh,
reducing workloads for faculty, building more and more ornate campuses or more satellite spots. And so I think part of the question then becomes, what are we doing to make sure that if we're providing that kind of support for more students, that these campuses aren't just using it to subsidize programs that aren't useful, that no students actually want to study?
And I think there's a couple of things here that we ought to do in concert with that. One is the college degree was never meant to be a certificate of employment. If you want to get a college degree, that's great. And if it's teaching you valuable skills in nursing or engineering or
I think it's appropriate that employers be able to make sure that you've got the right skills. But we've got a problem when you need a bachelor's degree or even associate's degree in order to be able to fill out an application to rent cars.
There's just no obvious linkage between having to pay a fee to some college to give you a piece of paper that allows you to go seek a job. So if we're going to make it easier for folks to afford to get those degrees, we also ought to make sure they only need to get those degrees if they want them. Correct. And then we also need to have, you know, governors. I think you've seen some of this starting to happen in Florida.
Florida with Governor DeSantis in Ohio and Texas, governors DeWine and Abbott are talking about it. If you are particularly a Republican governor, you ought to be looking at your state public colleges, your community colleges, your public universities and asking them to document where money is going.
what are the staffing ratios how many courses are faculty actually teaching right at a place like the university of arizona or asu listeners might be surprised that a standard teaching load is often two courses in the fall and maybe one or two in the spring for a total course teaching load of six hours a semester correct um for this we're paying you know taxpayers are on the hook for a
$120,000 a year plus benefits, plus summer vacation, plus staff support. So I think we need, you know, I'm fine talking about how do we make sure, you know, our kids aren't getting busted in order to offend at 10 going to college. But we also need to talk about how do we make sure that these dollars aren't
aren't getting fed into a self-perpetuating blob, but are actually paying the real cost. It's funny. It's funny you say that. There's actually a bill right now that was vetoed here in Arizona by Representative Matt Grice that would give teachers a $10,000 a year wage increase.
And the teachers unions having a fit because it was tied to only giving teachers the pay increase, not everybody else in the education establishment. I mean, yeah. And you can't you know, the problem is, if you and I were sitting down writing a show for HBIT, we couldn't even make that up.
Right. We couldn't make it up. I mean, just, you know, we're saying, you know, years ago, a good friend of mine started this initiative called the 60 cent solution, which required that 60 cents of every dollar going to public schools go to actual classroom. The classroom is defined by the Department of Education. That's teacher salaries, desk textbooks and so forth. Right.
And at that time, there were a lot of states mid-50 cents, high-50 cents. There's a lot now in the 40s. It's gotten worse, and that was 10 years ago. And they just keep talking about, we're not paying teachers enough. Well, of course not. You're taking it for everything else.
You know, it's a one way, I think, to tie together these conversations, both about how it covered, you know, how the media covers the loan forgiveness. And then this question of where the dollars are going that we're putting into K-12 and the choice conversation is, you know, your listeners who whatever whatever media they read, they ought to ask, though, they ought to expect those outlets.
to use consistent principled standards if the standard when they're covering uh voucher proposals or education savings accounts is who's going to benefit where do these dollars go
What are the legal questions? That ought to be the same standard when it comes to spending lots more dollars on salaries or to loan forgiveness. If the media is going to write puff pieces about how much this money is needed and explain why the folks who are going to benefit think it'll be helpful, they should bring that same standard when they're talking about education savings accounts and charter schools and tax breaks.
Problem is we've got a media which uses one standard for the right and one standard for the left, and that's a recipe for distrust. Absolutely. Rick Hess, Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at American Enterprise Institute. Thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope you'll join us again soon. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Chuck. My pleasure. Folks, visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can find this interview on your local radio stations or any podcast we have. Have a great weekend.
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