Senator Roger Marshall: The Senate's Doctor 54:29

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Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz and appreciate you joining us. This is going to be a good show because I'm going to highlight a couple things in the news. We're going to point out the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. There's plenty to talk about there. And then we're going to phone a friend. This week, I'm excited to have a little discussion with...

Senator Marshall from Kansas. Uh, I, lots of you do know who he is. Uh, a lot of you from Kansas, but I gotta tell you, if you, if you aren't, if you're not as familiar, it's a rising star. Somebody who's got his, uh, his moral compass on straight and a good conservative principles. And I look forward to hearing more about him, his journey, how he got here and what he wants to do. Uh,

as a, as a Senator from Kansas. So I look forward to this discussion with Senator Marshall. But before we get to that discussion, I want to talk just a moment about a couple of things in the news. And, um,

I hope you had a chance to see. A little while ago, I got to guest host for Laura Ingram. Laura Ingram, the Ingramangle on Fox News, 10 p.m. Eastern. Honored to fill in for her shoes in her seat every once in a while. And we led off the other night with a story that I just hope everybody understands because it's so pivotal.

Michael Schellenberger was one of those that was able to get access to these Twitter files, they're called, be able to look under the hood now that Elon Musk is at the helm there at Twitter, and some of the great reporting that he had. If you look through his Twitter feed and look at the thread, it happens to be No. 30 and 31.

And it probably didn't get enough attention. But basically, here's what happened. In August of 2020, there were a group of people who got together. They just happened to be former Department of Justice people, National Public Radio, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN. And they got together via the Aspen Institute. And some people from Stanford were there.

And some of the people at Stanford were, one of them was a former Washington Post bureau chief.

So these people were either current or former members of these news organizations, and they got together and they created a tabletop, if you will, basically a role playing. They were anticipating that there was going to be negative news about Hunter Biden, and they made up scenarios about how to deal with it, what to do with it, what they would do, what they would say, how they would spin it.

And isn't it interesting, you know, sometimes you go out and you see a story will break and everybody seems to be saying the exact same thing. Well, these people did that. And what they did is they practiced and they set this up.

They didn't know what the story was going to be, but they anticipated that it would be about Hunter Biden. Isn't it that interesting? Because, you know, the Department of Justice, actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the Hunter Biden laptop back in 2019. Right.

So fast forward to August of 2020 in a presidential election year. And guess what? They're role playing and colluding together to try to figure out how to support Joe Biden, suppress Donald Trump and push for one particular candidate. And as Michael Schellenberger has exposed now, these people were gloating about how accurate they were when guess what? The Hunter Biden laptop story comes out and

in October of 2020, the story was suppressed. It was denied from the very same people or should say the organizations were the people that were in the room role-playing this.

This is a very dangerous thing. What's happening, though, in the news is that Congress, now that the Republicans are in control of the House, have created this select committee that is going to be focused on the weaponization of the government against the people of the United States. And particularly looking at the FBI and the Department of Justice and what they're doing to weaponize for personal political gain,

to tilt the scales in one direction. And I'm telling you, it's much like what's the phrase, the church commission. I think it was more than 25 years ago, this church commission did something similar. But you're going to see this group headed by Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio that's going to get after that and pay attention to this story. But that's just but one thing that they're going to be looking at.

All right. I want to also focus on something else I saw at FoxNews.com, and I won't go through the whole history of it. This happened in Florida, where basically there was an attempted kidnapping. It was carjacking. There's some video because there was a dash cam that was pointed inward, and you can see it's horrific video, scary video. I guess the point I want to make there is that the people that...

were accused of committing this crime. And again, just accusations. But if you look at their past history, they combined have

85 felony charges and 11 felony convictions between the two people that were apprehended for this crime. Somehow society is going to have to come up with a better solution for those that are serial type of convictions. Maybe one doesn't justify a life sentence. I'm not suggesting that they're doing that, but.

When you have 85 felony charges, 11 felony convictions, what are you doing back out on the street? And now you're doing this again. What makes you believe that you should ever be released because you have such a pattern? Now,

The overwhelming majority of people that go to prison, they're coming back out again, something like north of 95%. And I do believe, and I helped lead the charge when I was in Congress, to work on being the Department of Corrections, not just incarceration, but corrections, to get them moving to be productive members of society. And the key metric here is how do we reduce the rate of recidivism? But if your recidivism rate is like essentially 100%,

At some point, you have to say, sorry, folks, your game is over. You're not going to terrorize and commit additional crimes. Because you know what? Those victims are going to have to live with those crimes for their life, for the rest of their life. All right, let's get a little bit lighter and let's talk about bringing on the stupid. Because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. All right, let's go to the Lone Star State. Let's go to Texas, where Vice President Kamala Harris, well...

She was there visiting and she decided that on this particular speech, she was promoting and talking about abortion access. And in her speech, she said, this is a quote, we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, for those of you that are familiar with the full quote of what I think she was trying to quote,

which is we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What Vice President Harris is doing is just talking about the right to liberty and pursuit of happiness. What about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Oh, how convenient that the Vice President left out the word life.

because she was there to talk about abortion. She's not concerned about life. She's not committed to life. She's committed to abortion and killing of babies. That's where her priorities are. So never mind the founding documents of this country. We're just going to skip right over that. And we'll just talk about liberty and pursuit of happiness and forget about life. That's Kamala Harris.

All right. The next one. That is stupid. All right. Let's go to the next one. This is Joe Biden speaking in Springfield, Virginia, a little while ago. And he this is what he said. He said he was getting all whipped up like Joe Biden can do sometimes. And he said he will, quote, veto everything they send now.

If that's your quote, that's your approach as the president of the United States, that's a far cry from what he campaigned on. He's going to unite the people, he's going to bring the red, the blue together that he had worked in the Senate. He knew how to work across the aisle. He was going to be the uniter in chief. What a lie. I mean, what an absolute piece of fiction.

to suggest that any piece of legislation, which, by the way, means it has passed the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, one's controlled by Democrats, one's controlled by Republicans, that he's going to veto everything they send.

To just say we aren't even going to listen, no matter what you're going to do, unless you have two-thirds of the body, don't even send it to me because I'm just going to veto it. Why do you just dismiss every single Republican idea that's out there? That's absurd. And it's not productive. So thanks, Mr. President. That's about one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

All right. Now it's time to move on because we're going to talk to somebody. I'm actually excited to have this conversation. I've met him, spent a little bit of time with him along the way. And he's he's a superstar there in the Senate. It's Senator Marshall of Kansas. So let's dial him up, see if we can't get him on the phone.

Hello, this is Roger Marshall. Hey, Senator, this is Jason Chaffetz. I appreciate you picking up the phone. Hey, Jason, what are you up to today? It's good to hear your voice. Well, you know, they have this thing called caller ID that you could have easily not picked up this call, but I'm honored that you would do so. Where are you at? Did I catch you at a good time? What are you doing?

Yeah, Jason, we can make this happen. I think you understand what the life of a congressperson is. But this morning, I was at Kansas University, the top basketball program in the nation, if you didn't know that, the winningest program in the nation talking about cybersecurity.

I'm halfway between Lawrence and Salina, Kansas, and on my way to talk to a group of farmers about the farm bill we're doing this year. So it's a great time to chat here. We've got about an hour and a half of drive time. All right. Well, listen, I've been to both of those places, Lawrence and Salina, because my brother actually was a Jayhawk. He actually...

was on the football team there. He was a place kicker back. They weren't so good back then, but he was on the team. It was a good experience. He was in the athletic department. Unfortunately, he was on the football team, not the basketball team. Well, we understand that KU is making a resurgence in basketball. Of course, KU is one of my alma maters. My undergraduate was at Kansas State University.

and my medical degree from KU. And actually, before all that started, I even went to a community college on a track scholarship. So very fond of KU, fond of K-State. It's a great time to be a Kansan. If you haven't heard, the Chiefs are in the playoffs. Kansas State basketball ranked in the top 10, KU in the top 10. So it's a great time to be a Kansan. It's a great athletic state. No doubt about it. Now,

Senator, what were you running in track? Were you running, jumping, throwing? What were you doing in track? Yeah. So, Jason, I was a four-sport person in high school, and I went to college on a javelin scholarship. Don't we all? Don't we all? Yeah. So I got to the college, and I went to my first track meet in

And all the guys on the javelin were honestly 40 to 60 pounds bigger than I was. And I'm afraid that they may have had some artificial help with some of it, but that's a story for a different day. But my coach said, hey, you know, you're really good at everything. Why don't you run the decathlon? So I switched to the decathlon and that became my sport for the next three years. Wow, that's...

You must have been able to hurl that thing. I don't know where that talent came from, but four sports. So what were the other sports? Yeah, so baseball, basketball, football, and track. Wow. Well, you know, and you check the box in both K-State and KU. No wonder you're the senator. I mean, not everybody can do that, right? So those are quite the rivalries. Yeah.

Yeah, when I was recruited to run, the people that were coming to me said, you've got a great political profile. And I said, well, what does that mean? And they said, well, you've got degrees from a community college, from Kansas State, from Kansas University. I had two kids going to KU, two to Kansas State. So we checked the box, some military background, and I delivered, I guess, 5,000 babies by that point in time as well. So that was kind of the launch of my political profile.

Yeah, there's nothing like, you know, somebody who's delivering babies to build their own network of a political base. It's pretty hard to vote against somebody that, you know, brought you into this, helped bring you into this world. So, yeah, you crank out a, you know, help with all these pregnancies and

It's probably a good political base. It is, and it still amazes me. Very few weeks or days go by that I don't meet someone that says, hey, you delivered my daughter. Just in D.C. this past week, somebody was in my office, and the first thing they said is, oh, by the way, you delivered my daughter. And so it is great. When I do these parades, the kids that I delivered, of course, so many of them are growing up now. And I even delivered some

some children who are adults and had their own children and I delivered them as well. And that was kind of one of those things like, huh, I've been doing this a long time. Maybe I had to do something else, but it's still great. I see those, you know, it's just not the immediate family in Kansas and, you know, your home state as well. It's a family thing. So you deliver the daughter while you're, that means, you know, the parents, the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, all of them. So it isn't exactly, you got it. Yeah. Family is so important to us.

Well, listen, let's go back here because, I mean, you've accomplished so much in your career in so many different areas. And, you know, you're an up and rising coming star there in the Senate. But I want to go back to start with I was born in and kind of walk us through kind of how you got there. I mean.

Explain to us what your childhood was like. What were your parents like? What was brothers, sisters? What was life like? And where'd you kick off in this world?

There you go. Well, Jason, I'm a fifth generation farm kid. And so we were born on a farm. Both my grandparents and parents grew up on family farms. Like I said, I had to be a fifth generation. What kind of farm? What were you farming? Yeah. So it was a multi-purpose. Once upon a time, you could raise a family on 160 acres of farmland. So there's a lot of wheat. There's always a herd of cattle, maybe a little bit of alfalfa.

some milo, rotating a little bit of corn, a big, big garden. And we had some chickens as well. So we had some fruit trees. So we really, not that we had to live off the land, but that we were just blessed that we could have a lot of food from our own farm. And wheat was probably the cash crop.

Every fall, we would sell some heifers and steers, and that's how we'd go back to school. My parents would take that money and buy us some new shoes, a pair of jeans, two or three shirts, and away we go.

So by the time I'm five, it's obvious that there's not enough land for my dad to stay on the farm. We moved to town 10 miles away from that farm. And my dad, who had served in the International Guard and he becomes a police officer, eventually becomes the chief of police in my hometown for some 25 years. Wow.

A small little city, 200 people in my graduating class. Graduated first in my class, a three-sport lettering varsity athlete. I had to give up baseball by the time I got to my sophomore year in high school. So that's basically the story. And I think the other part here is just that I'm a first-generation college student. By the time I was in ninth grade, I wanted to become a physician.

I just thought that our family doctor was the most respected person to my parents, to my family. He was just so good and kind to us. I said, "I want to be like him." I found out I was pretty good at math and science and worked hard and been blessed to get scholarships to go to a community college, and then the rest is history.

As you started to do that, you respected this doctor, but did you go talk to him? Was there somebody that encouraged you? Because sometimes for a young man trying to make a life decision like that, maybe the parents are a big influence, maybe something happened. Was there any kind of moment that really pivoted and changed the trajectory of your life like that or did it just kind of come naturally? Yeah.

But Jason, believe it or not, there was a lot of discouragement. My whole life I was told that I could not become a doctor because my parents hadn't gone to college. And I would just say to myself, but I've got the top scores in the class. I didn't make a B. I made a B in penmanship in fifth grade. I'm still upset about that. I didn't make another B till I was a junior in college. And so.

So it was motivation. You know, one of my sayings, one of my roommates gave me the saying, make disappointment and appointment with God. So those trials and tribulations of life should make you stronger. Certainly my parents, so 110% supported my grandparents, great relationships, spent my summers working with them. So they gave me the work ethic, was blessed with the academic talent and just absolutely feel that God called me to become a physician and,

And just again, throughout my whole career, growing up and going even to medical school, that family doctor was there to give me some words of encouragement. Yeah. You know, in the heartland, being the family doctor has, I think, a different meaning than maybe today and in some of these big cities. I mean, you literally would have people who'd come to your house. They were part of the community. You knew them. You saw them at the movies together.

There's a kind of sense of community, I think, that comes from that that I'm glad I got to experience, but I worry that far too many people don't experience. Yeah, it's a sense of trust, I think. And even today, family members, friends, former patients, very few days go by that someone doesn't call me and say, hey, I need some advice.

And a lot of the job as a physician is to listen. Like our job in Congress, so much of it's listening. Right. And just being like my mission is to be a beacon of hope for Americans and for Kansans. That is what God has instilled upon me, that my mission as a senator is to instill this beacon of hope. And as a physician, the same situation.

And so I'm constantly doing a lot of listening. And sometimes I do have connections and they'll tell me like what type of doctor should I go to? Who's the best breast cancer doctor at the med center? Who's the best oncologist for lymphoma? And lots of these people are classmates of mine now. They're respected professors at the university. So I'm so glad that I can still share that part of being a physician and a family supporter.

You're listening to Jason and the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Senator Marshall right after this. The Fox True Crime Podcast presents Crimes on Campus, sharing chilling stories of scandal, corruption, and murder. New episodes available every Tuesday this month. Listen and follow at foxtruecrime.com.

So, I mean, as if your plate wasn't full enough there, you know, all the schooling that it takes in order to become a doctor, then actually going into practice. But you also have some military background, don't you? Yeah, Jason. So we got married two weeks before medical school started. I'd met my wife about, gosh, eight months before medical school started, and

Two months later, I asked her to marry me. And we got married, like I said, two weeks before medical school started. A year and a half later, guess what? We're going to have our first baby. And that was no accident. You know, we were – both of us families so important families.

And rather than take a loan, I said, dear, I probably need to, you know, my hope, my dad served, my brother served, my great uncle served, my uncle served. Uh, yeah, I've never done this yet. And can we join the military? So we joined the army reserve and we were, uh,

in Wichita, Kansas at the time. And I'm taking off to go to Washington DC to Fort Belvoir actually, just outside of Washington DC for like two months of officers training, officers basics and training.

And I'm leaving, she's at her mom's house, I'm gonna leave her there with her mom for a couple months, and this little baby, and she's crying, and I say, "Oh, go grab your suitcase, I'm taking you with me." I was the only person that showed up with a wife and a kid at Officer's Basic, but we figured it out. - Good for you. - What an incredible summer that was. And we're kinda jumping ahead here, Jason, but that's when I became a true patriot.

certainly understood our nation's history. But that summer at Fort Belvoir, whenever we had an evening off or a weekend off, we would go spend one day. We spent a day at Mount Vernon, a day at Monticello, a day going through the American History Museum. I remember being on the Potomac River watching the Beach Boys play. John Denver and the Boston Pops at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. But it just

It put all the pieces together. And as I learned, you know, these people that made our country what it is today, the founding fathers, how they gave up their, just not their, they gave up their personal wealth. They gave up

They left their jobs. They left their wives to take care of the farms where they went to battle. They took their own cattle with them to feed the troops. They took extra clothes. I mean, what a sacrifice these people made for us. And like I said, I think it was during that summer that I became a true patriot.

Yeah, no, there's something that touches your heart when you get to actually see it. And then you start to, you feel the history of it and you feel the weight of it. And it's impactful. It really is. I think you make a great point about that. Okay, so you're doing the military. You got a wife. You got a child. You got a practice. Then that starts to grow and grow.

What happened? Did you have some lightning or a tornado strike you there? What made you one day walk home and say, hey, you know, honey, I got this idea. I think maybe I should get into politics. Like, what happened there? Yeah, Jason, and I...

The long story short is we were recruited and it was the end of Barack Obama's presidential reign and the worst economy of our lifetime. National debt was doubling. And for a year or two, people were asking me to run. And my wife told everyone, no, he's not interested. And my first grandson, though, was born in 2015.

Two kids just finishing college, they can't find a job. One just entering college and one's going to be a senior in high school. And the first grandchild comes and it's one of those moments that typically a couple will sit down and say, okay, now what does the next chapter of our life look like?

And she looked at me and she said, I'm not happy about this, but you like to fix things. This country is really broken. It's time for you to go to Washington. And she's and she has always been my my burning bush, my you know,

The worst decisions I've ever made is when I did something she told me not to do or vice versa. And she said, she said, she needs, we yell, you need to do this. So we knocked on four doors. Those turned into 16 doors. Those turned into 64. Really this, this idea that God was opening doors faster than we could knock on them. And, and again, the rest is history, but I'm just going to share, this is rather personal. Um,

It's hard on families. This job is really I love my job, but it's really hard on our family. If you would ask me today, my wife is not happy about my job, but she knows it's what God wants us to be doing. So I feel really good in my own skin doing what I'm supposed to be doing today. Never looked back.

Just grateful for this next opportunity to serve much like the military. This feels like I'm serving truly, truly serving the country in the military and just a little bit different capacity. Yeah. You know, it is tough. It's supposed to be tough. Nobody's going to shed a tear for us.

a representative or a Senator for, you know, having to work hard. But the toll of being away from your family, that really is the most difficult thing. You know, when I, I was an office dweller, I slept on a cot in my office, the eight and a half years that I would, that I was away. And, and it's just tough, you know, you finish your day and it's late and you're tired. And then you have a phone call with your wife and that's very different than being home and

just doing the regular things that you're supposed to be doing, like taking out the garbage and watching a movie or doing stuff like that. My wife and I would try to synchronize what we were watching on, on movies and kind of watch them together, even though we were in two totally different parts of the country, but

you know, that that's that's the toughest thing, I think. I think you're right. And it's hard and it does take a toll. It does. And I think back to my life as an obstetrician, those 5000 babies certainly took the toll on the family. But I was always almost always there to read a book to my kids at night to say a prayer with them for dinner. I quite often about the time I took the first bite is when I would get called to

the delivery. Someone had asked me in the morning and say, what time you think this baby's going to be here tonight? And I would say, well, let me check my, ask my wife when dinner is going to be. But through all that, I taught, my wife and I taught a Sunday school class all those years, was a deacon in our church. And I never missed

I never had to go deliver a baby during that Sunday school class. During the church time, I was expected to leave. I had to leave early sometimes, but I always was able to spend some time with my families where I'm going with this.

And if you would talk to our kids or my family, they would say they lost their father and their husband the year I went to Washington in 2017 to a great extent. And I'm ashamed of that, that I can't quite figure out that balance on how to do this job as a senator and still be a good husband and father. And, you know, quite often people ask me, say they're praying for me. And I typically ask them, please pray for our families. They're the ones that really need the help. I love my job.

I'm excited to do my job. I'm called to do my job. But I'm not a very good husband and father right now, brother, a son, all those other roles that we have that God has given us. Yeah, I think Paul Ryan actually probably said it the best, at least when I was there in the house. And he said, yeah, I like my job, but I love my family more. And I think that's right. And that's what I hear you saying. And that's the way I felt and others that I served with, you know, people saying,

You know, like John Radcliffe and Trey Gowdy and some of these others, they had the same kind of approach and feeling to that. I think a lot of members do. Unfortunately, not all of them. But, you know, that's a reflection of life in this country. OK, so now that you're there and you've got to see the problems and the challenges and the dysfunction up close and personal.

I mean, you've kind of dove right in, and it's not like you've been bashful about getting your fingernails dirty, so to speak, and getting into the issues. What are you passionate about? I know you've worked on immigration and other things, but what's on the top of your agenda? Yeah, Jason, and that's defined by the people of Kansas. We finished up 105 town halls last October, 2020.

My goal was to do one town hall in every county. And these are announced town halls. They're rowdy. They're not cooked. They're not cooked. We've done more, you know, 10 times that number of round tables, made visits, and truly try to keep our fingers on the pulse of what's important to Kansans.

And what's important to Kansas is, number one, their concerns is the economy inflation. That's one issue to me. Next is our safety and security. And number three is the attack on our God-given constitutional rights.

I think as a senator, you walk in there and we have Democrats in control of the White House, the House and the Senate. And we knew we'd have to fight back. You know, you've been there when we had all three of those as Republicans. And I'm sure you were there also when the Democrats controlled all three of them. And it's kind of a different posture on what you're going to be doing. Right.

And sort of the people of Kansas sent me there to literally fight for their rights, to fight for those family traditions, the values that you and I were raised on. So what's got me going right now is our national debt.

I think that the national debt is the number one problem that America is facing right now, whether you're talking about national security, the ability to fund the military, or you talk about education, the ability to fund our schools. If you think that roads and bridges are the most important thing, then we need – if we're paying $475 billion a year in debt,

in interest with a $31 trillion national debt. It's hard to do those other things. Again, I've ran businesses. You cannot succeed or grow your business if you're paying such a large amount of your income for interest. So that's what's up front and center to me is how do we get control of this budget process?

Yeah. And you're touching on a couple of different things. I remember once going and speaking to a high school crew and I, a group of high school students, and I always found that they had the most probative questions. They asked more sane questions than just about anybody else and tough questions. And so I was given this spiel about the debt and I was saying, you know, if you spend a million dollars a day, every day, it'd take you nearly 3000 years to get the 1 trillion. And now we're

The number was less when I was there, but it keeps going up, you know, and this young lady raised her hand and I said, yes. And she said, OK, so you you're talking about the debt going from eight trillion to 20 trillion. What does that mean to me? Like, you know, and and I think the numbers are so big. They're so astronomical. They're so big.

Um, unbelievable. Um, you know, people have a hard time comprehending a billion, let alone trillion. And so, you know, what effect does that have on me in my life? And I'd love to know what you have to that answer, but somehow, some way we need this collective, um,

surge from the public to demand that we actually fix the problem and not just keep punting it down the road. You got it, Jason. I go back to the earlier part of our conversation when I decided my wife said it's time to go. One of the little factoids in that my grandson was born with $35,000 of national debt at the time.

It quickly drew to 60, and now it's probably closer to 90, $100,000. I haven't done the calculation this week yet. But let's just say that every person in America owes $100,000, and we're going to ask our grandkids to pay that debt. I think everyone understands that that's not right. It's not proper.

And let's bring it down to real world terms. I think whenever we can relate the problems in D.C. to what's going on at home, as you know, we're facing our debt limit right now. The amount of money that Congress has authorized the Treasury Department to borrow money that we're up against that. What it feels to me is like when my

I'm going to say my wife maxed her credit card and she just wants another credit card. You know, when we were in medical school, we faced those types of days. And instead of getting another credit card, we said we better do some financial planning here. Maybe I'm going to go get another job, whatever we need to do. But we cannot afford to get a second credit card. So that's what Joe Biden is asking us to do right now.

And I think that lots of Americans can relate to that situation. So I think that this is a sword that Republicans have to die on, that though I don't want to blow through our national debt, I do understand our debt ceiling. I understand the financial ramifications.

But if we don't face that issue today, then I'm putting more debt to my grandchildren that are going to have to pay for the sins of my generation. Yeah, I mean, it really does scare me. I think you're right. It's hard to argue that there's anything more important than getting our fiscal house in order because we are the world's superpower.

But that can't just be the military. It also has to be our economic might and our moral fortitude. And, you know, you have to have all of those turning in the right direction. And our financial house is not that.

And, you know, when roughly 75 percent of the budget is mandatory programmatic spending, that Congress only votes on the discretionary portion of the budget and that the servicing of the debt is going to eclipse defense spending here in the next short while.

you know, we have a real problem on our hands and it would be malpractice to not address it and fix it and move it in the right direction. And, you know, it bothers me. I just today I had heard, you know, some member of Congress, a Democrat saying, oh, it was the Trump tax cuts that was the largest contributor to the deficit. And I thought, no, that's not right. The so-called Trump tax cuts are

Rates went down, but guess what? Revenue to the Treasury went up because the economy was zooming, and it was the all-time record amount of money coming into the Treasury. So don't tell me the tax cuts added to the deficit. It actually improved the situation. But not only do we have to zero out the deficit, we have to start paying down the debt.

Yeah, Jason, you nailed it. We don't have a taxing problem. We have a spending problem. Yes, yes. And again, take it back to your own family. Look, every family has this discussion. Every church has this discussion. You have to say, we've got a spending problem. We can't ask the congregation for more money. We can't go to the bank. I'm running this business. We have a spending problem.

The tax, the Trump tax cuts actually increased revenue again, record revenues coming into our tax coffers right now. And, but here's the, here's the beauty. And when you talk about solutions to this, what does a balanced budget look like Jason? And it's not as challenging as I thought it would be. If we would cut our spending this year by a hundred billion dollars, the

and froze it there, we would have a balanced budget in four years. Does that make sense? If we cut our spending by $100 billion and then froze our spending, and this is what American businesses do when something is upside down. You freeze your spending. When people retire, you don't replace them. When people quit, you don't replace them. And I'm talking about the federal government employees here right now. We need to freeze our spending right now

until we have a balanced budget. And fortunately, the economy is strong enough. Again, thanks to these Trump tax cuts and rolling the regulations we rolled back, we could do it. And then the next step, though, is we've got to, you know, what burns me, you know, I talked about balancing the budget, but as rolling back regulations,

You and I saw what happened as we rolled back regulations for four years under the under the previous White House. And now Biden is whatever we got rolled back. He's put him back in and even more so. So now the drag on the economy, we're all starting to feel that when the economy drags and we have less tax revenue.

Yeah, I mean, it just, it really, there are some very basic things that have to be done that can be less painful than waiting and then making just draconian cuts that would be

I mean, they're going to be they're going to have to be impactful. But it's just the federal government can no longer be all things to all people. I mean, you can't do that. I mean, they're just doing far too much. The policies that have been implemented are really problematic. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be right back.

Talk to us for a moment. You just literally a couple of weeks ago, like two weeks ago or something, you had this op-ed on Fox News dot com about the border crisis. I mean, this is self-inflicted pain. These are policies that Biden and Harris decided to implement that have created this chaos at the border. And

You know, Kansas, Utah, where I'm from, they're not border states, but they really are border states because we're dramatically impacted by what's going on there. Give us your perspective. Yeah. So, Jason, I've been to the border three times and I've seen it up close and personal. The first thing your listeners need to know is that Joe Biden wants this crisis. People all the time in this town ask me, why can't Joe Biden figure this out? And I have to say, look, he wants this. He wants 8000 people crossing the border illegally every day.

And with his current policies, it could easily double in the near future. So he wants this crisis. You know, you've talked before and others about what the political gain to the Democrat Party by this happening. But among other issues, it certainly is a national security issue. Our open southern border is the most immediate problem.

security threat that this nation faces. We don't have to talk any further than fentanyl poisoning. I emphasize that it's poisoning. These kids, and I say kids, this is the number one killer of young adults right now is fentanyl poisoning. These young adults are ordering, let's say, a Xanax tablet or maybe it's an Adderall tablet to get through an examination, to get through finals. For whatever reason, these terrorists are lacing them with fentanyl

and poisoning their customers. So I don't quite get it. And that's the point that Utah, that Kansas, that we are now a border state all across the state, the nation, this fentanyl is impacting us. 300 people dying every day across America from fentanyl poisoning. We've lost more young adults from fentanyl poisoning than we did the entire Vietnam War. Why won't Joe Biden wake up and defend ourselves?

our country. I just don't get it. I don't get it either. I mean, the one time Joe Biden got close to the border, he actually sat down and mentioned that more than 100,000 people have died because of fentanyl. And now he was bringing up that number because of the proximity to the border. And the reality is everybody is telling us that's where it's coming from. So even by his own admission,

A hundred thousand deaths, which is just a stunning number. It affects every community. And yet their policies exacerbate the problem. And I'm tired of hearing the White House and then the press secretary tell us, oh, you know, the border is closed. No, it's not. There's no metric there.

that can justify what they're doing down at the border right now. They really, really can't. And anyway, it's kind of disgusting. We got to continue to move on here. So I'm going to transition to something just to get to know you a little bit better. These are kind of the rapid questions. Just have some fun with this and just allow us to get to know you a little bit better. Okay? All right. All right. First concert you attended.

gosh this is probably embarrassing but it was an alice cooper concert yeah what's embarrassing about that that's awesome well my well my buddy won the tickets to it from like you you're calling the radio and the ninth caller gets free alice cooper and uh he said will you go with me i said sure uh so we did alice cooper i was probably 16 or 17 in high school we drove over to wichita for an alice cooper alice cooper wichita kansas

Back in the day, he's turned out to be quite the philanthropist and an avid golfer. He's like the most normal guy, just loves golf and seems to be a pretty good guy. But yeah,

Boy, he was a pretty hardcore rocker back in the day, so that must have been interesting. Good first call for the concert. That's pretty funny. Yeah. All right, what was your high school mascot? The Wildcat, the Fighting Wildcat. So once a Wildcat, always a Wildcat, red and black collars.

Still got my letter jacket somewhere. Yeah. Do you ever see that movie? The oh, gosh, when they first get married is Steve Martin's in it and Father of the Bride.

And I love it. Father of the bride. And he goes up in the, he's like, oh, I got a tux. I don't need to rent a tux. And he goes up, stick up into the attic. He goes to put it on, you know, and it just, his whole back. Yeah. Yeah. I love Steve Martin. And I think, yeah, he goes up in the attic. He kind of has this memory moment of going through his child's life or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. What was your first job? And I'm not talking, Hey, your parents telling you to take out the garbage. Like,

What was your first job when you had to work for somebody else? Somebody else was your boss and you got a paycheck for it. Yeah, yeah. So certainly I worked on the farm every summer and every weekend. But my first job outside of the family was working on what we call a cell barn, Jason, if you know what a cell barn is. So on Saturdays, all the ranchers, farmers would bring their cattle to one place. And my job was to sort heifers from steers.

And then they would funnel them through this big long process and the auction, they're sitting there auctioning them off. And then at the end of it, we would return them. And I got to tell a quick story here is one of the first lessons I learned was from the boss.

By the way, we had to do a lot of shoveling and manure as well. But within about six months, I'd worked my way up to this intake position where the cattle were coming in. And the big thing about it was we were on a platform above the manure. And the person would come up and I'd say, what's your name? I'd write it down. And then I'd write a description of his cattle. We'd put a tag on it.

And like 12 hours later, and we did, we worked 12, 14, we worked even a 36 hour shift one time, the cell was so big. But at the end of one of those nights, we saw the owner of the company walking down towards us and I could tell he was mad. He showed me one of these white tickets and he said, who did this ticket?

And I looked at the writing, and it was me. And he said, you misspelled this farmer's name. All this farmer has is his good name, and I want to make sure everyone spells these farmers' names right.

And of course, what did I say? Yes, sir. Yeah, it's a good lesson. That is a great lesson. You know, that's the thing. A young person getting a job isn't as much about the money, although the money is important and the value of a dollar and all of that. As all these lessons and things that you learn is self-sufficiency. And, you know, so the Democrats go out there and they rail about, oh, we need to raise the minimum wage. We need to raise the minimum wage. But they always...

delete or forget or oblivious to this idea that, you know, 14, 15 year old kids, they need to get a job and again, pay them. But, you know, some places want to go to $22 an hour. Well, a business owner isn't going to pay $22 an hour for a 15 year old to go, you know, get their first job. There ought to be like an apprentice wage or a,

something like that, that they can bring in these young people, you know, working at a sandwich shop or I don't care what it is. My, you know, I pulled weeds in Arizona. I worked at a, the general cinema corporation, you know, ripping tickets and popping popcorn and cleaning theaters and,

I think I was making $2.88 back in the day. And it was more about learning the value of the dollar and hard work than it was about, you know, anyway, I just, we missed such an opportunity to have the lessons like you learned and you're still talking about today. Absolutely. I still remember Mr. Seelig telling me that. And, you know, I remember like I started off at $2.35. That was minimum wage. About two months later, he gave me a dime raise. And I was like,

whoa, I'm, you know, this is, I'm going to be getting rewarded. I'm working hard. He's recognizes it and I appreciate it. And, and you're, but just a quick one is that you're right. If we raise the minimum wage too much, you're going to eliminate those 16 year olds from being able to find a job. Yeah. And the McDonald's of the world, they're going to say, we can't afford this. We have to automate. And you've started to see that with Taco Bell and McDonald's and others. And I can't tell you probably more than of all the podcasts we've done,

when we talk about your first job, more people have said McDonald's than any other job. And I think they've done such a great service to this country. And I'm sure, you know, the Burger Kings and Taco Bells as well. But people go and they work for an institution that actually knows how to train up and expect people to wear a uniform, get in line, show up at work on time, be cleanly, you know, cleanliness is important, all those things. Anyway, all right, that's my little soapbox here.

unique talent that Senator Marshall has that nobody really knows about like can you juggle things can you like throw a frisbee with your foot I mean what what do you know what unique talent do you have that nobody knows oh gosh Jason I play a little guitar but I'm actually a very good with a shotgun I'm a very very good shot and I'm and I'm a pretty darn good fisherman and

So I'm going to go with those. Oh, that's good and fun. That's good. Some people's talents aren't exactly, don't sound like a whole lot of fun. All right. So if you and your wife could invite one person over, who's your favorite?

You come home, say, honey, guess what? Special treat. We're bringing somebody over dead or alive throughout history. Who would be that person you'd want to sit down and break bread with and have a have a nice meal at your home with your family? Yeah. Dwight Eisenhower. Interesting. Yeah. You know, here here in my backyard, we'll be driving right by his birthplace, his memorial place.

his library here in about 30 minutes as well. And gosh, when I was 10 years old, President Eisenhower died. My dad was an up-and-coming police officer. He was asked to be in the processional, the funeral procession. And I woke up. It was like a rainy Tuesday morning. I'm in second grade. And I get my Sunday's best on and I say, OK, Dad, I'm ready to go. And he says, oh, I'm sorry, son, you can't go.

And I said, what? He said, well, you had school today. And I said, what? Every Kansan should be at this funeral procession today. There's nothing more important. And I did not get to go. But later I had my birthday that summer. And my dad said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, we need to go see where Ike is buried. And made a lifelong journey of following his story.

teachings and you know I think about Ike I think about leadership I think about integrity I think about accountability and just a very modest person so probably Dwight David Eisenhower yeah what 34th president of the United States yeah what a great military leader great president yeah and impactful in the world and

With those Kansas values intact, I'm sure that was a big part of his success. That would be fascinating. All right, two last questions. Most people get tripped up on this one, so be careful here. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no? No. Okay, well, that's the right answer. Judges like that. They usually applaud at this point, so good answer. Yeah, no. No, no, I like meat on my pizza. Yeah, you don't need a wet fruit on your pizza. Yeah, people say, oh, well, tomatoes, and I'm like,

Yeah, but they're like, that's like tomato sauce, you know, paste. I like tomato paste more than I do sauce. All right. Last question. Best advice you ever got? I'm going to say Bob Dole. Remember where you're from. You know, it's those simple things, those simple phrases. I think that you put them into your core. And I think that's right. You remember, particularly when you're in the House, when you're in the Senate, you remember who you work for. You don't work for those people in D.C. You work for those good people in Kansas who are

banking and betting and hoping and praying that you make... There's tough decisions, but you're making the right decisions. And you're certainly off to an amazing, amazing start. So many thanks to your family, to your wife, your kids, all that for the sacrifice away from the family to do those hard and difficult things. I appreciate you joining us on the Jason in the House podcast, but thanks for your service as well. Appreciate it.

you know, the military side of things and, um, you know, serving in Congress and delivering all those good babies. Yeah. Yeah. Jason, it's great. Thanks for letting us tell our story. Uh, there is a person behind all of these microphones and photographs. So thanks for letting us tell the story. Thanks for, for your, for what you're doing now to serve the country as well. God bless you and your family and, and your, and your mission, uh,

there as a journalist now. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Well, awfully kind and generous of the time that Senator Marshall gave us as he was traveling through the crossroads there of Kansas. Just you can see why he's got his head screwed on straight. And I can understand why the good people of Kansas

Decided to send him back to serve in the United States Senate. Really do appreciate him. Listen, I hope you're able to rate this podcast. Would really appreciate it if you could rate it. Subscribe to it because we've got great guests that come on every week. I want to remind you that you can listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

Head on over to foxnewspodcast.com to see some of my colleagues who also have some Fox News produced podcasts. But join us next week. Again, rate it, review it, subscribe to it, and join us again next week. We have another exciting guest. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.

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