Representatives Miller and Brecheen on the Federal Debt Crisis 01:16:00

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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today, we are honored to have with us Congresswoman Carol Miller. She represents West Virginia's 1st Congressional District, and she also serves on the Committee on the Ways and Means, a very prized committee assignment. Congratulations on getting that. She is a mother of two. It's two sons, right? Am I correct on that? Yes, you are. Seven grandchildren.

And she's married to her husband, Matt. They live in Huntington. And she owns and operates Swan Ridge Bison Farm and manages real estate. And she's been in Congress since 2018. Congresswoman Miller, welcome to the show. Well, good afternoon and thank you. So the first most important question I'm going to ask all day is this. How was raising two sons prepared you for managing the chaos of Congress?

There were many times when they were just like puppies wrestling around. I mean, they're two and a half years apart, and personalities totally different from each other. And their interests sometimes coincided in things like Little League and football, but

It was a good beginning of where I went. And, of course, I volunteered in the school system 16 or 17 years. I actually certified to teach. I always joke when it was when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But I was a stay-at-home mother working a farm and working –

apartment managing from the time my second son was still in diapers at age 41. So it's been quite a while. And all the different experiences that you have in life, because I waited until I'd raised my family before...

running for the State House and then, of course, in Congress in 2018. And so I have years of experiences of lots of different volunteer work, lots of different kinds of boards, being in shows. God gave me a beautiful singing voice, but he didn't give me the gene of let me entertain you. So I never wanted to be in the lead role. I would have been perfectly happy standing behind a pillar just singing my heart out.

So, you know, I don't have the usual type of personality necessary for politics. But, you know, just all the years of experiences I've had through different boards and different volunteers and managing apartments and managing, you know, I raised bison, by the way. So they're not just fluffy, sweet little animals. They are animals.

We maintain them as nature intended them to be. They are grass-fed and they wander over acres and we move them around and then we do harvest them for meat. I've done a lot of different things. I've been in grocery stores cooking and letting people sample. I've been in farmers markets. I've done all kinds of different things, which leads me back to your question. Raising two boys and sitting on bleacher after bleacher, well,

we're quarterbacking or playing basketball or whatever we were doing, all has prepared me pretty well for this rough and tumble sport. Oh, it's fantastic. Speaking of rough and tumble sport, you are on the ways and means committee. Tell our audience, what does that mean being on the ways and committee? What's that mean to them? And how is the, how is the debt ceiling debate being affected by your committee assignment?

Well, the debt ceiling is going to affect everything. But the Ways and Means Committee is the oldest, most prestigious committee in Congress, and it's the only committee that's directly mentioned in the Constitution. So I was humbled by

and honored because I realized my freshman year I came in, I was on transportation and infrastructure oversight and climate crisis, but I realized very quickly when I started dealing with issues in my state that

trade was so vital and, you know, it's been the rulers, I guess we would say, or marker or something since the beginning of man trading one thing for another, be it a stick for a rock or, you know, you killed an animal and I just built this really neat canoe, however we traded. It's been around forever. And so, you know,

with our world and the condition that it's in, trade is very important. And so I've met with over 80 ambassadors

Extending my hand to them as the world leader of the United States, we're a pretty big deal. And we need to make sure that we reach out to all of the countries and particularly our allies. But getting back to your question, which basically was about the debt ceiling issue.

Oh, you know, our debt right now is $31.2 trillion, and we've increased it over the last two years by about $10 trillion. So it's extremely important that we solve our debt crisis and protect our taxpayers and everybody. But I'm focused really on trying to get the reckless spending under control and being very cautious about

and deliberate with what we do because we, I don't want my grandkids shouldering this burden. And we've ever since I've been around, the spending has just gone up and up and up. And just like, you know, if you gave your son a credit card when he went off to college and he went whoopee and just maxed it out,

You might be really, really angry with him, but you still owe that debt. And so you would definitely put a curb on his spending right away, but you're still going to have to pay your debt. And that's making it pretty basic, but that's what we are up against right now. Well, you know, and that's a great point. You hear the national press likes to say, and it's true, Republicans have also been responsible for this national debt, and they have to a great degree.

But as you deal with your Democrat colleagues, where do they think this money is going to keep coming from? Have you asked that question? I mean, when is when is the till run out? Where do they think it just keeps coming from?

Well, you know, they always talk about taxing the rich, but what they don't realize is most of the people that are burdened are the working class people. And money, I was taught money doesn't grow on trees. I started babysitting when I was old enough to hold a baby on my hip.

and earning money. And I hate to say I earned 35 cents an hour, but that was the going rate at the time. And then 50 cents and I really thought I was someone I got up to a dollar. But, you know, I worked as soon as I could. You know, at 16 years old, I was out in the workforce. So it comes out of your pocket, comes out of my pocket. And we have to be strategic in how we handle it.

Well, it's not only comes out of our pockets, the way we're spending, we don't have enough money in either anybody's pockets to keep paying it. I mean, that's the problem, right? Correct. You've got to start balancing it because there's just not enough money in all of our purses and wallets and money clips. It's just not there.

Well, and I used to joke when I was in the state house that when my kids left home, I just filled all their closets with my clothes too. And so then I got to the point where I wasn't going to buy anything new unless I took something else out because there wasn't any room. So you can do it pretty basically there. But there are so many items that

are funded year after year after year that nobody goes and checks back and thinks, you know, do we still need to do this? Do we still need to park our horse down the street from the Frederick Hotel? I mean, you know, some of these things need to get off the books and be, you know,

really looked into. And that takes a lot of hard work. Yes. We're with Congresswoman Carol Miller, Republican for West Virginia. Congresswoman Miller, you have a great bill, which I think all taxpayers should know about. So when the American Rescue Plan was passed in 21-21,

it lowered the threshold of $600 a year with no minimum on the number of transactions the government can tax. So if you get Venmo for somebody selling you a Peloton bike or movie tickets or dinner, after $600, they want to tax it. Isn't that – is that correct? That is exactly correct. And it just blows my mind. If you've already bought a drum set –

Or a Peloton or anything, paid taxes on it. And you're downsizing your house or your garage is just full of bikes and all these things. And you want to move them on. And, you know, people are much more...

sophisticated in the way they move money around. So I thought I was a big deal when I learned how to do Apple Pay. But to do this is just ridiculous. They've already paid taxes on them once, and they're just basically recycling things into the economy. And it's just not the right thing to do. And, you know, we had it before where the reporting requirement was $20,000. And

200 separate transactions. But this is just another budget gimmick. Pay for, is what we call it. And so to lower it to the threshold of $600 is just ridiculous.

Dear listeners, what Congresswoman Miller is talking about is she has proposed H.R. 190, it's Saving Gig Economy Taxpayers Act. And this proposes that independent contractors are those who made money through an e-commerce platform like Venmo or PayPal. We have to earn at least $20,000 to have at least 200 transactions to qualify to submit a 1099.

And so you need to pay attention to this. This is really important because of the American Rescue Plan of 21. That was eliminated. So whatever transactions, whatever money you get in for $600 and it's been suspended for a year, they're going to start taxing. So contact your contact, your congressperson and tell them no way, Jose. We have about one minute left here before our break. How can people get a hold of you and find out more about

For example, Saving Gig Economy Taxpayer Act or learn more about you? Well, you just call the office. That is an old school way of doing that. Well, I have district offices in Charleston. I have them in Beckley. I have one in Huntington and Bexley.

I should say I know my own phone number, but I better look it up real fast because I've got different offices that do that. In Washington, it's 202-225-3452. And, I mean, as far as the rest for Charleston, Huntington, and Beckley, West Virginians, I mean, we are a family. We are a community-based community.

Everybody knows each other and they text each other. And so nobody's ever had any trouble getting a hold of me at home or any of my staff because we just call each other and text. So as far as Washington, it is what I would call fancier or a little bit more professional. But there are plenty of ways to get a hold of us. Fantastic. We're going to take a break. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm Chuck Warren and we're with Congresswoman Carol Miller of West Virginia. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today, boy, we're honored to have Congresswoman Carol Miller, representative from West Virginia, serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. And we're excited to have her for the second segment. But folks, are you concerned about your retirement?

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Y-R-E-F-Y dot com and tell them Sam and Chuck sent you and they'll help you get your retirement plans together. Congresswoman Miller, tell us a little bit about the Energy Export Caucus, which you serve on. Well, I am a founder of the Energy Export Caucus. Thank you. If you take into consideration where I'm from, which is West Virginia, and for 160 years,

West Virginia coal and natural gas have been powering the world and helped to build our country from the ground up. And I saw the need, having served in the Statehouse for 12 years in various functions, and recognizing that one of our best exports was now becoming our children, our educated children, because of the war on coal, that...

People need to understand how important it is for us to have dominance in the energy arena and to do everything cleanly. And so I was trying very hard to make it a bipartisan caucus. We have Henry Cuellar and Lou Correa.

one from California and one from Texas. Lou's more interested in windmills and solar panels. Of course, Jody with the oil that you have in Texas. From our end of the world, I didn't mention Jody Arrington. He's the other Republican beside myself co-chairing along with Henry Cuellar from Texas. I'm stumbling over myself. Sorry. It

It's so important for us to be energy independent and to have an all of the above platform on how we future in the future that we power our country. And, you know, the power grid, as we all saw with that last terrible freezing that went on in Texas and grids were having a lot of trouble keeping up. So,

I've taken that committee, and we're going to open it up to anybody that wants to join because we had a whole lot more Republicans at the time that were more pro-energy. But just to reaffirm our commitment to the all of the above energy and pragmatic energy solutions, the carbon capture, all the things we're working on, hydrogen and nuclear and all of these things.

These, you know, graphite, graphene, there's so many different things that are going on in our country that we should be supporting and doing whatever we can to flourish. I met with people from the EU two years ago.

and said, why in the world are you buying your gas and oil from Russia? Do you understand? They don't like you? And then they thought, oh, no, we're going to be fine. And then lo and behold, they do start cutting off power.

power to Ukraine in various places that, gosh, maybe Carol was kind of right about that. But it's important that we also export to our allies and support them and have the good energy solutions that we want to have and keep being competitive and certainly not buying our energy from countries that are not our friend.

Well, it's the perfect example is what Ukraine war with Russians evasion has done to Germany in the European Union right now. I mean, you are prophetic to a degree telling them stop relying on your enemy. And that's what Americans, even those who don't like energy production, and we have some of those in our country, have to realize unless you're energy independent, you are beholden to the whims of the world. That's exactly right. And I

say, do you not remember your history? Do you not remember? Talk to your parents or grandparents about World War II and what happened and how terrible they were to the Ukraine then, them starving them. I mean, the history is there. You just have to learn from it. And we're not learning and teaching enough of that in school, by the way. The whole nother. Oh, yeah. It's a whole nother kabang, isn't it? Talking about Ukraine for a minute, I don't spend a lot of time on this.

Do you just see this being prolonged for another couple of years? And do you see a way out of this mess over there? Well, I'm really glad that Europe and other NATO countries are stepping up because I think they now realize how important it is. And, you know, Russia is the aggressor and the Ukraine was the breadbasket. And if you just look at the pictures of what they've done to that country, it's just absolutely terrible. So, you know, I,

I'm supportive of sanctions against Russia and many things because we are united behind the Ukraine and their fight for freedom and democracy. Don't forget that. Vladimir Putin, he needs to be held accountable for

Yes, he does. Let me ask you this. When you go back and do – we've got three minutes left here. But when you go back and do town hall meetings, what is the most common question you're asked by your constituents? Well, I haven't done a lot of town hall meetings since COVID. We did a lot of those over the phone with bringing physicians in and the rest. But I travel regularly.

My district, you know, it's seven hours for me to drive to D.C., but if you go from Huntington, West Virginia, all the way across Pocahontas County and into those beautiful, beautiful mountains, it's a five- and six-hour drive. And so I make sure during these district weeks that I'm meeting with the county commission, that I'm meeting with the business owners, that I'm meeting with...

you know, somebody that owns a truck stop or a restaurant or whatever, just to hear. And so systematically I'm going. And since we've had the change and I put a dig in about bad policy, you know, West Virginia's population has shrunk to the point that we are now just two districts. So I picked up 10 new counties. And so I've got 10 counties to make new friends in. And that is what I look at it as. And so I am traveling around. I'm,

I'm all the time on the move in the car. So I've changed from being on bleachers to being in the front seat of a car, moving all the time. But they are concerned about that.

Having employees, supply chain, I'm having trouble getting this or I've been in the process of building a house and lumber's gone out of the roof and, you know, getting a hold of the plumber. And it's very basic needs that after COVID and people...

There was so much money flowing around. There are a lot of people that just haven't bothered to go to work. Anywhere you go, there's a sign, help wanted. You know, please apply. And, you know, when you own a business, employees are very, very important to you. And I don't think sometimes the people on the other side of the aisle truly understand that.

how a business owner respects and appreciates good employees. And so they're struggling and looking for people that want to work. We still are feeling the...

the pain at the pump. We're feeling the pain when you're buying eggs or milk or any of those things. And so that's what I'm hearing about. But I think for the most part, they're just grateful that this pandemic is no longer going to be the major factor in everything that we're doing. And that was the initial reason why some of that money was spent is because we were in uncharted territory. But then they took it and

I'm going to end this break, but you're absolutely right. We appreciate you coming on the show. We hope you'll visit again for our listeners. Besides listening to your local radio station, you can catch us on BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Congresswoman Miller, thanks a million. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. Sam Stone now joining in studio and on the line with us today, another fantastic guest.

Republican Congressman Josh Burkine from Oklahoma's 2nd Congressional District, a committed Christian, husband, father, and fourth-generation rancher in Cole County, Oklahoma. Boy, you have been facing all the headwinds in your own profession. Now you go to D.C., and you are in the middle of a debt fight of a lifetime. Yeah, it's...

You know, people don't realize, I know it sounds, anytime the intensity of the moment is upon you, you think this is the worst it's ever been. But people have to understand, since the past 85 years, we've had 100 different debt ceiling debates. Yeah.

This is something on average we do every year. And the most major reforms on spending, not that they've been transformative, but most of the major spending reforms, not transformative, have occurred since 1985. There's been 11 of these, and it's because of this type of leverage that the debt ceiling brings forth. So let me ask you this question. I think we're in agreement. Us defaulting is not a good thing, correct? No.

No, I mean – but we're not going to default. Even when you look at the 95 Contracts America class, when you have two November, then December standoff, government shutdown, they're going to pay the interest on the debt. They're going to pay the – they're going to prioritize debt.

And really what it creates the opportunity to do is for discussion about where are the areas that the federal government is supposed to be involved and where are the areas that they shouldn't. I mean we're going to take care of Medicare and Social Security and the interest on the debt in defense. And the sky is falling.

So we agree with you here in the studio. Look, I think all of us here are talking. We agree you can't default, and B, we can't continue on this path we're on. They're not sustainable, period. It just can't happen. And the more we continue on this spending path, the more we give up our sovereignty.

I mean, that's just the reality of it because other people are making decisions. So, for example, we're spending $750 billion a year on interest. And people want to talk about we need money for this or that. Well, you're spending $750 billion on your credit card bill. I mean, they can't continue, right? So let's break these numbers down to your point. Okay, go ahead. So the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, says,

that we are, before the end of this decade, seven years, we're going to be spending a trillion dollars just in interest payments on our debt. That's not principal. That's money flushed down the toilet that is the exact same amount. Actually, it's more. We spend about $800 billion, a little over $800 billion right now in defense of our country, all our military, all expenditures. We are, within seven years, going to be spending more on interest to service our debt than we spend on our military.

What a waste. And then the CBO is saying that within another little over 25 years, almost half of our entire federal budget will just be interest on our debt. So we are headed towards fiscal collapse. You read economists, and you've got to be careful with them because most of them are professors funded by the federal government through colleges. But the wisest one I've read across the state from says we all know this can't continue.

forever will come to an end. That's what we're facing. We're facing... We think it'll happen to everybody else, but not us. Yeah, it always happens to either guy, but not us. My question is, do you think your constituents understand the gravity of the problem? Well, that's why it's important for people to know the numbers. Right. I mean, people hear trillion dollars tossed around, and no one's going to address the problem unless they can really understand the problem. And most people...

I think – look, I come from the business world, and I've had time in state politics. But when you're in the business world trying to run a business, you don't have time to get your head around the problems of the nation. You're trying to – the problems of your household, the problems of your business. And so to put this into perspective, everyone can start understanding and go, wait a minute. I've got to demand my elected official start cutting spending. Can we grow – can we have an economic boom that can help us out of this in part?

But we cannot grow our way out of this problem. We are also going to have to cut. We're going to have to go after the areas that the federal government has brought in that were not a part of the 18 enumerated powers. Article one section of the Constitution said that was the role of the federal government. We've got to start identifying. Is that really a role of the federal government or is that a role to the states or the individual? Well, that's absolutely critical, I think, at this point, because I don't think folks realize how much the annual deficit has increased in the last five years from last

I think, $300 billion a year to over $3 trillion, right? So I can go by my kids by how much we've grown our national indebtedness. So keep in mind, until 1981, we did not even have up to a trillion dollars in national indebtedness. And to put a trillion dollars in perspective, I would have to count out a second at a time a dollar, lay it

lay a dollar down on the table, take me a second, pull my hand back, bring another dollar out there. It would take me 31,000 years if I didn't eat or sleep to put a dollar at a time and get to a trillion dollars. 31,000 years to count out a trillion dollars. Wow. And so we tripped a trillion dollars in 1980. And then about 2007, we are— Congressman, I'm going to hold you up there. We're going to continue this when Breaking Battlegrounds comes back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone on the line with us right now. Congressman Josh Burkeen from Oklahoma's 2nd Congressional District. When we went to break, Congressman, you were talking about the explosion in the national debt from 1980 just reaching a trillion dollars at that point to where we are today. I'd love for you to pick up where we left off.

Yeah, so 1980, we reached a trillion dollars. And then we, by the 2004 era, we're about $7 trillion. By the time we get to 2010, we're at about $15 trillion. And here we are, a little over 11 years later, we've gone from $15 trillion to $31 trillion. We have doubled our national debt in the last 11 years. That is astounding. We are spending spree laden.

And we have to have somebody that pulls the horses around as well. You know, I think people understand what Einstein's maxim about the power of compound interest in their personal lives and how it can apply to wealth generation or debt creation. But very few people, Chuck, seem to understand it on a national level. So, Congressman, how do we start?

Besides having the federal government actually focusing on what they're supposed to focus on, what is a plan you think – and, I mean, this is just ballpark here. What do we start doing to pay down this national debt? I mean, that's –

Yeah, we've got to prioritize. And so I'm on the budget committee. We are looking at the areas of prioritization. The great thing is we have founders that were brilliant. They wrote Article I, Section 8. They listed 18 enumerated powers, and I'll just name you some of those. Some of those 18 enumerated powers, one-fourth of them is war, declaration of war, military, army, navy. That is –

That was supposed to be the areas the federal government was to have in their bailiwick. And then you had the post office and post office roads and piracy enforcement, coining money, borrowing, as one of those enumerated powers. They're really good at that one. Regulation of commerce. What we've done is outside – I didn't list a full 18 of them, but then it gets to the Tenth Amendment. They wrote all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution –

just to abbreviate what's said in the Fifth Amendment, are reserved to the states of the people. What we've done is, there's a book that Stephen Moore, that advised Reagan and Trump, people recognize his face, he was at Cato, et cetera. Stephen Moore and

And it's called Restoring the Dream. And he said in 1900, 60% of all tax collection was done at the local level. And tax collection and tax spend, 60% on the local level. And only 20% in 1900 was on the federal level. And by the time we got to the mid-'90s, those numbers had flipped. And 67% by the mid-'90s of all tax collection and tax spend was on the federal level, and only 20% was on the local level. Wow.

Wow. What's happened is we perverted what was the role of the federal government versus what was the state and the individual responsibility. Absolutely. And I want to posit something else because it's something we've talked about on this program. If we did what you said and cut the federal government back to its enumerated powers, we would be returning a lot of power to the states and to local jurisdictions. And I think given the division in this country, that's potentially one of the best things we could do.

to start healing is allow people to live in their states as they choose with less intrusion from the federal government. Do you agree or disagree? Yeah, I agree. And James Madison agreed. You know,

They never wanted the minutia of the details to be done on the federal level. Federalist 45, James Madison Wright, the powers of the Fed are to be few and defined. He was talking about the articles, those enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8. And the powers of the Fed are to be few and defined. The powers of the state are to be numerous and indefinite. They wanted laboratories of democracy, experimentation across state lines where you could look at success or failure, and another state could say, oh, we're going to try that.

Or you see a failure and go, we're not going to try that. We're going to do something different. We don't have experimentation because so much of this is top down. Well, and you served as an Oklahoma legislator. Oklahoma, for folks who don't know, is has been a very well, I mean, generally very well run state. You guys are in good shape. Your citizens are happy. You've got a balanced budget. Isn't that the kind of thing that everyone should have the power in their hands to do?

Yeah, we should. I ran the bill that put a cap on our state debt when I was a state senator. Now, to be frank with you, they play loose with that. We have tax-backed and tax-supported debt that there's ways to get around on a balanced budget. So I had to put a – I mean, one of the things we need to do on the federal level if we could ever get the courage to do it is a constitutional amendment. And one of the things I've learned, some things people across the country have learned, even in states that have a balanced budget, is you've got to –

Make sure that you don't have the gimmicks that are played versus tax-backed versus tax-supported bond financing. Bureaucrats will always find a way to get around the restriction on spending. Congressman, let's talk quickly here. So China decided to put a spy balloon going across America, which apparently the Biden administration has known about for more than a day or two.

What should we be doing about that? I just saw our Secretary of State has canceled his trip to China because of this. As a congressman, what do you think we should do about this infracture? Well, I think we have to be a country that's perceived, number one, in strength. And I also think that we need to return back to a place where the Congress, I thought a while ago, war powers.

Most people don't realize because since 1973, since the War Powers Act, we have allowed the president to be the one that's looked to in terms of the one who gets us into conflict. And I contend when you look at the five wars that we declared and were successful in, the War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the people were with us.

The people were with the war declaration, and we saw those wars through. And our founders were brilliant. They said the Congress in Article I, Section 8 is the one to declare war. James Madison, one of my favorite fathers, who's known as the father of the Constitution, said there's no greater wisdom to be found in the Constitution than the question of the clause, which leads the question of war and peace to the legislature and not the executive. I think what we've done is we have –

empower the president of these War Powers Acts to make America look weak too often. And our yes needs to be yes, and our no needs to be no in America. And Congress needs to return some powers back to itself as to when we're going to get into conflict, we're serious about it, and the will of the American people follows the Congress. So you absolutely agree on that. So what should Congress, what should we do about them setting a spy balloon over our country, over Montana, looking at our nuclear silos?

I think that the Congress needs to be talking about it. I think the Congress needs to be investigating. I think the oversight needs to occur. And then we need to have a president who operates in strength and a president who is perceived as someone of strength. That's been missing. Absolutely. So what has surprised you being your new member of Congress? Have there been any surprises so far since you've been there?

Well, my first week being one of the 20 with the speaker's vote, I'd hoped that we could have worked out getting some rule changes and a direction on true spending reform. I'm grateful that the 20 of us that stood got great concessions on spending reform and going back to where the rank-and-file members have more power to put amendments.

spending cut amendment specifically on the floor. Not a single amendment had been allowed from the floor in the last six years under both Democrats and Republicans. And I will tell you, I'm excited about where Speaker McCarthy is having our conference leadership

lead us right now. We are having strong conversations about discretionary spending. It's not Medicare or Social Security, but we've grown the discretionary spending, the minutia, the details, the stuff people look at and go, why doesn't the federal government be involved in that? We're having strong conversations about if we've grown those areas since COVID about 20%, since 2019, three

pre-COVID, why wouldn't we look at some 2019 levels on what we were doing on some of that discretionary spending? Why is it such a big ask? Correct. And that's coming up

Well, and I believe you and your your colleagues who did that are owed a lot of credit and a lot of kudos that you you took a lot of slings and arrows at that time. You had people calling you, you know, all sorts of names right up to traitor. But the actions in you guys standing firm on that have made a huge difference in how Kevin McCarthy and this Congress is operating. So I would like to thank you for that.

Well, thank you. And I, look, I want to say this. I'm, I'm encouraged. Um, I'm encouraged by, um, the leadership that speaker McCarthy is exemplifying. Um, and it's, you know, there's leverage that was, that was provided to say, let's, let's, let's go right. We,

But Ronald Reagan talked about we need a Republican Party that's lifting bold colors, not pale pastels, a party that stands for certain principles that won't be moved. And that's what we're advocating for is you don't get people to come in and say, I want to vote Republican because they think they're going to get the unit party. You get people wanting to vote Republican because they think these guys mean what they say and say what they mean. Did Donald Trump create an opportunity for more Republicans? I mean, the one thing I most credit him with.

is that he took bold action, and I think people were desperate for bold action. And there's a lot more room, I think, for that now in Congress and in various state houses because of him. He went after political correctness, which is destroying us.

Political correctness and people just telling others from their positions in politics what they think people want to hear, it's destroying it. It's why people have got to get educated on where we're headed financially.

We have to have people shoot straight. And I was, you know, proud to see what Donald Trump did. And, you know, the guys, I'm blue collar. You know, I grew up in the cutting horse industry, ranching, cattle industry, dozer excavators, trucking. That's my small business background. You know, the blue collar guys, they're not resonant with them. They want a man's man that's going to stand up. And when he tells you something, you know that he's not turning

turning around whispering, you know, out the other side of his mouth to someone else. People are sick of that. They want the truth. Yeah, I think what you're talking about and what Washington has been missing for a long time is that simply get-it-done ethos that defines the blue-collar, you know, the blue-collar portion of America. They're just looking for results. And when someone steps up and delivers, they're going to back them to the hill. Look, there's a scripture...

The safety point is men of truth, those who hate dishonest games. You see places as leaders over 1,000, 150, 10. I've got the last part kind of paraphrased. But the point is if you can find somebody that you look at and go, I may not always agree with you, but if I think that you're a true stuff, and I feel like that you're not up there for self-advancement and you're not there to line your pocket, I can get behind somebody like that. I don't have to agree with you. I just got to know your motives are pure.

Great point. Yeah, absolutely. And those type of voters who look at the world that way have, frankly, the key swing voters in the last 20 years because they will go to whoever they see who evinces that sort of character. Yeah.

Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? And conscience asks the question, is it right? I learned that. I worked for a guy by the name of Tom Coburn who was known as being a truth teller. Many years ago I worked for him. And we need people that you look at and go, I'll go with you because I trust you. Senator Coburn, the greatest waste fighter in modern American history. He was a great dude.

Besides being a truth teller that he taught you, what else did you learn from him when you worked for him? He was talking about $7 trillion national indebtedness. He was talking about when I worked for him almost 20 years ago, everybody opened their eyes and took in the first breath of air, oh, and $24,000 is their share of the national debt that they would only pay off through a lower standard of living. That number – I got a 15-month-old. That's part of why I ran. Wow.

It's looking at her and knowing, where are we doing to secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, the Constitution says. And I know her share now is $94,000.

When I worked for Cobra 20 years ago, the baby that was born that year was $24,000. It's $94,000. When a baby opens their eyes, it takes in their first breath of air, and that's just the $31 trillion. That's not even the $20 trillion unfunded liability of Social Security, Medicare insolvency upon us in five years, the actuary tells us, because it's got a $35 trillion hole in it. What we owe veterans.

We'll be federal employees for pensions, intergovernmental debt. We're north of $120 trillion sum total debt liability right now. And out of all the countries, we're number 12 out of countries just on the $31 trillion of our debt-to-GDP ratio. People have no idea how bad a shape financial VR is in the nation. All right.

I've been doing this a long time, and I didn't realize it had gotten up to $94,000 per person. That's amazing and terrifying. Congressman, we have just about 30 seconds before we wrap up the program here. Tell folks how they can follow you and your work. Burkine.house.gov, www.burkine.house.gov. My last name is very difficult to pronounce. We'll have it up on our website and Twitter for folks who want to follow you there.

And look, I would just say we need people. We need a great awakening in this country. For our country to turn, politics is different than culture. If we don't have a great awakening where people are willing to put their nation's best interest and personal self-interest, we're not going to sacrifice for the next generation. We've inherited a great nation, and now we're borrowing it from our kids' futures.

That's the final word. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us, folks. Breaking Battlegrounds back on the air next week. Be sure to download and tune in for our podcast only segment. If you enjoy that, we are available on everywhere you can find a podcast. Breaking Battlegrounds back next week.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with Sam Stone. Today, we are honored to have the Honorable Christopher Campbell. He's a chief policy strategist for Kroll based in a New York office but lives in Miami. He is a formerly deputy undersecretary of Treasury. He was on the Finance Committee, led the Finance Committee for the U.S. Senate. He is a man who understands numbers and the government, and we're honored to have him on. Chris, thanks for coming.

Chuck, it's great to be with you again. It's always an honor to be on your show. A pleasure to have you. We're going to play a little clip here from Seinfeld. Go ahead, Jeremy. Is this my stereo? Oh, hey, you got it. Hey, what happened to my stereo? It's all smashed up. That's right. Now it looks like it was broken during shipping and I insured it for $400. But you were supposed to get me a refund. You can't get a refund. Your warranty expired two years ago.

So we're gonna make the post office pay for my new stereo now? It's a write-off for them. How is it a write-off? They just write it off. Write it off what? Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. You don't even know what a write-off is. Do you? No, I don't. But they do. And they're the ones writing it off. I wish I had the last 20 seconds of my life back. So, one thing...

that they do in Washington is we throw out all these terms, tax credits, write-offs, and the American public doesn't know what it is. So now we hear the debt ceiling or $31 trillion in debt. I don't think people understand what that means. They're just sort of told and it's true. We can't default. And at the same time, we can't continue down this path of adding more and more and more to us because, you know, people want to be paid back eventually.

What do you see coming about here in negotiations with House Republicans and the Biden administration? I mean, how do we get out of this impasse? Yeah, Chuck, this is an extremely great question. I'm often asked the question. There's really no really good answer to the question. But I'll say this is I like to liken the debt ceiling to people, something that everyone understands, which is that almost everyone in America has a credit card.

and you spend money on the credit card and you pay your credit card off, right? You may pay it monthly. You may pay it all at once. Uh, you know, uh, some people can't pay it and they get, you know, then the credit card companies start calling them. Um,

But what happens if you just choose not to pay their credit cards altogether? What typically happens in America is that they start writing letters, they put it in the collections and those kinds of things. But one thing is a real challenge is if you're dependent upon a credit card to live and you must use a credit card every single month, but you don't pay your credit card,

another credit card company is not going to give you credit. So you're left in this impossible situation, which is I have to have a credit card to live to be able to pay my bills, but no one's willing to give me a credit card. That's effectively what we're talking about when the American government starts talking about defaulting. So if we're not going to pay back those that have lent us money in the past,

they're not going to give us additional borrowing authority. They're not going to lend us more money in the future. And if they do use it, give us more money, it's going to become a lot more costly. So we're actually going to have to pay a lot more for the money they would give us if we had not, other than if we had not defaulted or not paid our bills back. So that's really exactly this.

To continue your analogy, it's like you went from, say, an American Express or another very good gold card, platinum, whatever –

And now you're getting those bottom basement cards that are charging you tons of fees and enormous interest. It is exactly the same. It literally is exactly the same thing. So it's again, it's very complicated in the process, but it's actually that the steps are exactly the same as American Family does, which is again, if you again, if you're a platinum or black and American Express car, the best there is and you don't pay that bill.

You're going to have to go to a credit card company. You probably can't even pronounce their name and they're going to charge you 300% to borrow money. That's exactly the same thing that would happen to the U.S. government. And at a time when the U.S. government has made so many bad decisions over such a long period of time, we have so much debt that the servicing of that debt or the interest that we have to pay on that debt is so high already.

that if we were to go into technical default or not pay our bills, the servicing on the debt would just go astronomically high where we'd have to pay so much more money just to get new credit, new debt for us, our government operations to exist. One thing that's going to blow your mind, it always makes me angry, and I'm sure that your listeners are the same, which is since the 2017 Tax Reform Act came,

the government has has brought in record number of revenue every single year since 2017. so every year 18 19 20 21 the government receipts or the government the amount of money the government collects on taxes is record every single year and yet

With those record receipts, the government continues to spend $1.3. So every dollar it brings in, it spends $1.3. It's funny. I actually looked this up because I follow some Twitter accounts just to increase my blood pressure. One is Robert Reich of the Clinton administration, and he was complaining about this. And so I looked it up in 17.

Tax revenue for the federal government was like $3.2 trillion. It's now like $4.3 trillion over four years. It's increased a trillion dollars in revenue, but our spending has increased $3 trillion. So let me ask you, I want to go back to this debt question, but I want you to explain something here. So tell us what the government's doing and explain it if you were running a household. The Biden administration now is saying they're doing extraordinary measures to

So we don't default on our debt ceiling. Now, they're probably going to have some things like April's tax season. So a bunch of money comes in, right? You have quarterly payments, things like that. But what are these extraordinary measures they're doing? And then if you can also relate it, say, like, this is a household. Here's the extraordinary measures they're doing. Yeah. So again, Chuck, it's an incredibly great question. There is a lot of opaqueness and some of it being very necessary because there is a lot of the market could respond to some of this stuff. Right.

But, you know, so this is working in Congress, as you mentioned, and also working in the administration and Treasury. I was privy to a lot of what goes on. But let's just without kind of pulling the curtain all the way back, let's just say that, you know, the government has a lot of accounts that it manages. The Treasury Department has a lot of accounts that it manages. Yeah.

some that have large cash reserves. And so there's a with prudent cash management, just like if you would at home, for instance, you may have a 401k account that, God forbid, things go really wrong and you may need to raid that 401k account to pay bills.

Right. I mean, it's not prudent. It's not smart. No, no, no money manager is going to tell you to do that. But if you're if you're in dire situations, you may have to do that. Government does the same thing. Government has a lot of accounts that it controls and with prudent and very careful money management can elongate the amount of money it controls.

it can, you know, has to spend with, with some creative account, creative ways of money management. Yeah. If they ever locate the $4 trillion, the Pentagon has lost in the last decade, we were, we're in much better shape. Touche. Touche. But it's, so I think it's like, like it's kind of back to the family. I think it's that I think doing and candidly, I mean, really genuinely, it's the mandate from the treasury department is, you know, I get,

they're there to do everything they can to elongate that as best as long as possible. So I, my joke is always, you know, when the government starts selling the furniture, um, you know, you know, we're in real trouble. So it's, you know, but it's, you know, it,

It's just the government has and Treasury Secretary has the rights and responsibilities working with the administration to do everything in now her power to make sure the government can pay its bills back. And that's one of her most best and most important jobs. So our national debt is what, 123, 125 percent of our GDP? Is that what it is, basically? Yeah.

We're approaching there and it's, you know, again, the problem is that the trajectory is just, it's not going away, right? So the annual deficit is still going to increase, which just, you know, further adds to the national debt. And the other challenge we have is that, you know, Chuck, you and I have talked about this before, and this is just, it's maddening to me, but

There's a lot of programs that are just what we call off book. So they're actually not even embedded in the national debt. And those are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. So that the unfunded liabilities in those three programs alone are multi-trillions of dollars that are not even embedded in our national debt figures. So let me have a what about moment. What about moment here? What other countries have this type of debt ratio? Is that like almost everybody now? No. You know what?

It's a great question. Please don't tell me Canada has their crap together. Japan has some trouble here. The European Union, before it became the Central European Union, had some countries within that union had some real significant challenges. There are other countries that have

have defaulted on loans in the past and like Argentina that are in this now cycle of dependency where they just can't get out of that cycle yet looks like they may go down another default again.

So I say it kind of that one thing that America has going for it. And really, there's a knock on wood here, but there's no real one country or even a kind of a coalition of countries that can supplant this is that we have the reserve currency. So the U.S. dollar is a reserve currency around the entire world. And so therefore, it would be.

this is why defaults for the for the us dollar is just it's it's so catastrophic because the ripple effect it would have on currencies around the world would be

Genuinely, no one knows what the day after looks like. It's called a depression, isn't it? Isn't it called a depression? Yeah, but everyone knows it's not going to be good, right? Right, yeah, right. It's not good. It could be really, really, really bad or just bad, but none of it's good. There's no good on this. So looking at some numbers, the United States is 12th worst debt-to-GDP ratio, number one, Venezuela.

Oh, boy. That's not good company. Number two, Japan, then Sudan, Greece, Lebanon, Cabo Verde, Italy, Libya, Portugal, Singapore bought rain. That's not a list you want to be on. No. I mean, Japan is the only country on there with a real economy. So, Chris, let me ask you this question. So the United States obviously is built differently than the rest of the economies in the world, right? We do have certain fundamentals that

No other country has in the world in a lot of ways with the economy, including our currency reserve and so forth. Okay. So say, how does the United States pay off $30 trillion? Do we just say...

We're not going to add any more to it over the coming years. I mean, we'll have a couple more debt ceiling increases, but we're going to have a budget together where we don't add to it. And because of the growth of our economy, because of our innovation, we're going to sort of grow our way and pay this back over 50, 100 years. Does that work for the markets? I mean, is that the way to do this? I mean, somehow it's got to be. Someone has to be paid.

At the end of the day, someone has to be paid. And we're spending $750 billion a year on interest. There has to be a reckoning and they cannot tax their way out of this. So how do we – is that how this goes about? Would the markets react? Again, you're just – I don't want you to do anything that causes problems. But is that something the United States said, look, we have a plan. We're putting it together. This is what we're going to do. I mean it seems like the world with markets, financial people think that's pretty cool. Is that even a possibility?

So look, you know, this is, again, a brilliant question, very, very complicated set of answers. You know, there is a, typically on the left, there is a new monetary policy

that suggests that debt just doesn't matter and that the government can continue to amass as much debt as possible because they're the ones that determine the payments. So some moron professors come up with this theory that doesn't make any sense. Well, except that theory had every hole in the world punched in it in the last two years. Go ahead, Chris. Sorry about that. Yeah, but there are some folks on the left that believe that. There's a lot of folks on the right that believe that we need to –

have to put the U.S. government under the constraints that every state has and making sure that the federal government balances its budget every single year, right? So every state in the country and every family in our country has to balance their budget or they're going to go to jail or they're going to have to go bankrupt or they're going to have to cease operations in state capacities, right? So...

but putting the the federal government under the same constraints that states and families have you know on the right um people would argue that that's that's that's kind of a fairness uh uh solution so if you kind of look at the at the bookends of each of the left and right that's kind of where we're at in the country

Certainly in the middle, I think when you look at this kind of dispassionately as much as you can, it certainly makes sense for us to start shrinking that gap. If we're going to take a dollar in, let's spend 1.5%.

Zero two percent. Right. Let's let's let's let's get rid of our annual deficit. So the year of the amount of money we're buying every single year to continue operations in the United States. Let's shrink that. We can do that responsibly in our country by making prudent decisions on on government programs that we're going to spend where we're going to spend money on and and starting to, you know, having money.

these programs that work, you know, the reality is this, the government, I can't remember a time. I've worked in a government a long time. I cannot remember a time the U S government eliminated a program. One, the only thing, the only way that programs go are they get bigger. They never get smaller and they never get eliminated. Right. Right. So having government programs have to justify what they do, right. Or to stand the test of scrutiny on, on, on audit or for whatever reason, right.

We're at a place now where we're having to make a decision. Do we put the burden on our kids and grandkids paying back a debt that they will never repay? Right now, it's $96,000 a person. That's the burden that every single person in America has for the debt. I mean, remind everybody that now this year, 65% of our country left paycheck to paycheck.

Yes. $96,000 per person is unthinkable. I mean, it's just, it's unapproachable for so many Americans. And so it's just unfair. And we're making that worse every single generation we do because the money we're going to spend just to service the debt, the bigger the debt goes, the more interest we're going to have to pay. Right? So we have to stop spending more money than we take in. Well, which is funny, all these class- Warriors.

don't realize that this hurts those they supposedly represent and care for the most. 100% hurts those who earn the least and work the hardest. Well, and then, Chris, to counter another point that you know they're going to say when they hear a conversation like this, let's say they tax the rich at an extraordinary rate, at an actual rate of 70% or 80%. That wouldn't be close to enough money to close this gap, would it?

So, again, another brilliant question. And this always blows everyone's mind. No one ever believes me. So I encourage your listeners to Google this. But so the federal government has a lot of powers. Of course, it has the power to tax. And so you can you can you can levy a tax on income. And so every millionaire in our country, you can you can tax 100 percent of their earnings, 100 percent of their earnings.

And the federal government also has this amazing ability. It's called a taking. It's a takings clause in the Constitution where the government can come in and actually take whatever they want to based on special circumstances. So let's say that the government comes in and says, like, we're going to do a federal taking. We're going to go into the bank accounts of all the people that make a million dollars or more. That still does not pay off our debt.

That's incredible. All right. So you were the majority staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. Were you there when the last time we had the two that were you at that position? We had the 2011. I negotiated the last 12 debt ceiling increases, one of those being one of the 2011 that led to the super committee. So how is this compared to those in the past? The current issue? This is I think.

We've never had a... This is the hardest one we're ever going to have to get through. I genuinely, Chuck, I don't know how it's going to happen. There's a couple rabbits in the hat that Speaker McCarthy and Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have, but I think...

There's so many compounding challenges, and that is that we actually negotiated directly with then-Vice President Biden in 2011 on that debt ceiling increase, what led to the super committee, which then later led to sequester, which was a significant reduction in spending in defense, in national defense. But because of that and because of how that went about,

Then Vice President Biden, now President Biden really felt like he was, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I would assume that he felt like he was a little betrayed in the discussions. And so I don't think he's eager to negotiate.

But the reality is not negotiating is very difficult and not – for whatever reason, going past that date of default, even if it's just technical, would be catastrophic economically. Well, we just – like I said, we just had before Congressman McKean from Oklahoma. He's new.

he's panicked about this issue and he is hell bent that they start doing budgeting differently in D.C. I mean, and that's a problem because I think there's about 40 House members like that. And he's got the right attitude. But the problem you run into is the entire bureaucracies and the Democrat Party are filled with people. If you try to cut a single dollar, they scream that you're killing children. Well, even freezing, you're cutting. Right. Even you say we're going to have the same budget last year. Well, you're cutting. What are you doing? You're killing all of us here.

Yeah. As a good, a good political mentor of mine always said that, that, you know, democracies are the best way of doing governments and governing the entire world, but they fail when people realize that they can vote themselves large ass. And so that the reality is that, you know, it's when people can vote for people who continue to give them more money and for, and using the government for redistribution, that's when, you know, like this democratic, uh,

A big experiment that we've been under for almost 300, more than 300 years starts to fail. So I'm going to ask you a question here. We're running out of time. So you, one of your specialty is healthcare companies, things of that nature, correct? Yes. A lot of this money goes towards healthcare. I mean, it's just expensive. You know, my, my insurance, my,

You know, for one son at home is like sixteen hundred dollars a month. How do we get this under control? I know as Republicans, we always think the free markets are going to solve everything. You know, that's just what we believe in a lot of ways. But it's also not reality in a lot of ways. What what do we do to get these health care costs, Medicare, Medicaid under control?

Yeah, it's a brilliant question. It's a very, very – this is an entire show, Chuck. Oh, exactly. I mean I don't think there's an easy way. People ask me all the time, like, what's your opinion? I say, I don't have one because I don't know – I don't think there's an answer. Chuck, right at the end of the program, I think it's a perfect idea to launch into a discussion about what we do. In 15 seconds, solve the problem. Here's the issue. We –

As humans and Americans, we spend almost 80% of money than we will ever spend in our entire lives in health care in the last three years of our life. That's the discussion. We need to find a way to actually make us more healthy and to spend that money on preventative care and not sick care at the end of our lives. Nobody in this world wants to have that conversation publicly. So move to Miami, walk every day, get a little vitamin D.

Health care will improve. Pay lower taxes. Less stress. Come on. Come on down. Chris Campbell. Thanks a million, buddy. Appreciate you. Have a good day. That was a fantastic interview, Chuck. And I hope folks learned something from that. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe. Get our podcast every week dropped right into your email box. You can find us breaking battlegrounds.vote. This is Sam Stone in the studio with Chuck Warren. Chuck, thanks so much for being here.

We've had some great guests on the program today, and I obviously thank them for that. But we need to talk about something going on here in Arizona that I make this kind of stuff just makes my skin crawl when I see it.

Well, it's a bunch of elitist professors at Barrett. Now, dear audience, ASU has an honors program called Barrett College. Barrett College is a very respected honors program. It's sort of like this microcosm of an Ivy League education on ASU campus. My oldest daughter went to it. It's hard to get into. It's a fantastic education. But as all things...

that are happening in higher ed now. You have a certain segment of professors, and I want to be very blunt here. This is not all professors, but there's probably a good third of professors at any university who think anybody who has an opinion that differs than what they believe should not be able to speak. That's where we're at right now. Now, I don't know if that's

a trend that's happening more now or that's always been, but now it's more, it's easily done with social media and complaining and so forth. And frankly, our media is,

with their beliefs a lot of time, these thirds. So they have benefactors and enablers in the press which pronounce this. So Barrett College has coming to speak to their honor college. On a health, wealth, and happiness seminar event. A seminar event. So no one's getting credits. And this isn't political, actually. It's really about other things. So we have a friend of the show, Dennis Prager, who is probably...

As smart, if not smarter than any of these professors complaining. He's one of the smartest people I've ever absolutely a student of the world, highly educated graduate degree in studying Russia. I mean, he's just I mean, he's frankly smarter than any of the 25 here moaning and groaning. Right. And then you have Charlie Kirk, who is not a college graduate, but he's coming because it's a happy, lovey dovey seminar on how to have a better life.

And to be fair, look, Charlie has been very successful at building a path for himself without a college degree and built a big organization. Right, right. I mean, you know, look.

credit people, whether you like their politics or not, credit people for their accomplishments. And again, he's not teaching a class where someone gets credit. No. This is a seminar. And the third speaker is Robert Kiyosaki. Right. And Sam talked a lot about Robert and his success. I mean, Robert is one of the leading authors of how to build, you know, for sort of how to build wealth books in this country. And his advice, frankly, I know him well. He's a fantastic person. He lives here in Phoenix. His advice is

Straightforward common sense. It's investing in things that have real value and generate returns over time. That is the cornerstone of everything he's done. Gold, silver. Gold, silver, real estate, property, things that have intrinsic value in any market.

And folks, I mean, that's just simply great financial advice, period. Right. You know, and they literally come in this letter from these professors at Barrett and they basically say that everything Robert's ever done is a scam, that it's some sort of pyramid sales scheme, which is total bunk. I mean, if you're putting Robert to that standards, are they saying the same thing about

Tony Robbins, a million people they probably would accept as being okay. Right. Right? You know, you have professors here, like we have one professor whose Twitter account, MIA, MIAprilD, she has a nice rainbow flag. She's a professor, lover of silent film, horror. She's one of the people complaining, and her comment on her tweet yesterday was, this is the kind of speaker my college is helping to promote. I'm beyond horrified to see ASU and Barrett putting people like him on stage. Right.

I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, they just don't want any diversity of thought anymore. But first, I guarantee none of these 25 professors who, you know, theoretically educated humans who are saying this, I guarantee none of them have actually paid attention enough to listen and understand what any of these three men talk about or stand for. And in part, I say that because the letter they sent out that got leaked that I have here and you have seen, um,

They have links to all the supposed evil that these people are involved with. Every one of those links is a bloody Media Matters clip that's taken out of context. Media Matters, which is definitely very far left attack machine.

Yeah. Paid by a bunch of Hollywood and New York elites. Yeah. It's all they do is attack. Its purpose is spin, period, not truth. I mean, let's talk about that professor again on Twitter, MIAprilD. She puts a comment about they showed a program note here with Prager and Kiyosaki and says, when your college sells its soul to the highest bidder, this is the result. What an outrageous embarrassment. Money over ethics. Donors before students.

I'm interested what she thinks money comes from from the university because I'm sure there are a lot of donors to ASU that conservatives and moderates would be abhorred.

if they knew their background. Well, I got to tell you what this says to me, quite frankly, is that Barrett needs to sweep out a bunch of DEI obsessed professors from its ranks. And in one of the, you know, the disappointing things about Carrie Lake's loss in Arizona, and folks know I was working with her, we were going to go in and do a lot of what Ron DeSantis is doing right now, sweeping out these ingrained

race baiters that have taken over academia and who are the farthest thing from actual academics because they are simply propagandists. They are the purveyors of the new Pravda. We will keep up on this issue. We're learning more. We're probably going to write something, put it on our Breaking Battlegrounds sub stack and website, and we're going to try to have Dennis Prager on next week. But folks, we need to live in a world

Right.

Right. And why that is a hard concept for a bunch of university professors now is mind boggling. Well, I would add this. These folks, you know, academia, the thing that bothers me often the most about modern academia is they clearly view themselves as being better and more informed and more intelligent than the masses. Well, just ask them. Right. Yeah. Ask them. They'll tell you. They will absolutely tell you that.

But these folks, quite frankly, Chuck, are so stupid that they cannot combat other ideas.

then they are certainly not living up to their own self-image. No, not at all. And they're not enlightened. No. At any means. It's a cult. Let's talk about one other item before we end this podcast segment. China sent a spy balloon over Montana. Now we try to get our last guest to be a little more specific on it. I understand. As a congressman, you have to be a little more. And I understand why he didn't. Us being on talk radio can be a little more blunt about the motives. Now, I agree.

It would be refreshing to see the president convene Congress or at least bring leadership in and say this is what happened and have them go back to their caucuses and discuss it. That is probably the best way to do it. But in case you're not aware of this.

A Chinese spy balloon has been flying over the United States for a couple of days. Okay? This is just a brazen act. Our Secretary of State was supposed to head to China today or tomorrow. He has now canceled that trip because he was hoping to tone down the rhetoric, which we commend, right? Absolutely. We don't want conflict of China. We want to coexist. We're not always going to agree. We want to be a bumper sticker. We want to coexist. We...

We want to coexist but contest in the realm of ideas and commerce. So they say U.S. military leaders considered shooting down the balloon over Montana on Wednesday. They eventually advised President Biden against it because of the safety risk of debris. Okay. That makes sense. All right. That makes sense. So –

From Billings, Montana, they issued a ground stop as the military mobilized assets, including F-22 fighter jets, in case Biden ordered the balloon shot down. Montana, in case no one knows this, especially our friends in Florida who are listening to this show...

is one of America's three nuclear missile silo fields. Right. So, so you have Montana, Wyoming, Wyoming, and Nebraska. No, it's Nebraska. Oh, is it Nebraska now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so now of course China, they're always good for a comment, right? Um,

They said they were verifying the situation, and China says it has no intention of violating the land, territory, and airspace of any sovereign country. Since we've been recording today, China has said it was a commercial balloon. It is not a military balloon.

Hopefully, this issue is resolved by the time we're on the show again next week. I don't want to see this dragged out because of it. Here's my view, Chuck. That thing is up in the jet stream. It is crossing a lot of open territory with nothing underneath it. Just go ahead and pop the balloon. Right. But China is now trying to verify the situation. And China has said there's no intention of violating the land, territory, and airspace of any sovereign nation. Obviously, they are not taking talking points from Russia. Yeah.

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