May 16, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:53
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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We are right. | |
| In fact, the text says $300 billion is to be cut from this vital food assistance program, which can lead to 11 million people going hungry. | ||
| Democrats said that this bill was going to kick people off Medicaid. | ||
| Looks like we were right about that, too. | ||
| The bill cut $715 billion to the program and will kick 13.7 million Americans losing health care. | ||
| Democrats said that the tax cuts will be going to the rich. | ||
| We were right again. | ||
| Okay, right now you're hearing the live stream of the budget committee as they go through trying to get this budget at least voted out of committee right now. | ||
| We understand there's a minimum of three, maybe four. | ||
| Republican knows, including some of the biggest deficit hawks, saying, hey, the math doesn't work here. | ||
| We've got to get back and start work over the weekend. | ||
| This is a key component. | ||
| President Trump's coming back tonight. | ||
| He arrives, I think, near midnight tonight. | ||
| He'll be on this over the weekend. | ||
| We're going to be going in and out of this committee to see if it doesn't get out of committee. | ||
| They're going to go back. | ||
| There's a lot more work to do. | ||
| I tend to agree with the Hawks that right now this math doesn't come close to working. | ||
| They've got to get serious. | ||
| Here's what we're going to do. | ||
| We're going to come in and out of the Budget Committee during the day. | ||
| We've got a great cold open of President Trump's triumphant tour and visit in the Middle East. | ||
| We're going to start with that. | ||
| We've got a packed show today. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let's go ahead and let her rip. | |
| Yesterday, the two countries also agreed to create a path for UAE to buy some of the world's most advanced AI semiconductors from American companies, a very big contract. | ||
| This will generate billions and billions of dollars in business and accelerate the UAE's plans to become a really major player in artificial intelligence. | ||
| And I read where the oil and gas and oil is great, but you're going to have equally big and maybe even bigger at some point, you'll be surpassing it with AI and other businesses. | ||
| So that's a great tribute to the job you've done here. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Like in the old, just a lot heavier. | ||
| Well, it's just a message of unity when you look at what we've just seen. | ||
| It's great unity, great faith, incredible people with a tremendous leader who's a friend of mine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| We just reached a fantastic trade deal, as you know, with the United Kingdom, which was wonderful. | ||
| And we have another big one that we just reached with China. | ||
| China deal is a very big deal. | ||
| It's in the process of continuing to be formed. | ||
| But they wanted to make that deal very badly. | ||
| And we have... | ||
| At the same time, 150 countries that want to make a deal, but you're not able to see that many countries. | ||
| So at a certain point over the next two to three weeks, I think Scott and Howard will be sending letters out, essentially telling people, it would be very fair, but we'll be telling people what they'll be paying to do business in the United States. | ||
| They'll essentially be paying. | ||
| To be doing business in the United States, I guess you could say they could appeal it. | ||
| But for the most part, I think we're going to be very fair. | ||
| But it's not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is... | |
| The primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | ||
| Friday, 16 May, year of our Lord, 2025. | ||
| There are decades in which nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen. | ||
| We're living through this week, this, what, second week of May in the year of our Lord, 2025. | ||
| Just absolutely incredible. | ||
| President Trump simultaneously reordering. | ||
| The relationships in the Middle East that really haven't changed. | ||
| This is so fundamental. | ||
| It goes back to World War I when the Arabs with the British Army, Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab Army, and General Allenby took Jerusalem and then took Damascus. | ||
| Sykes, Pico got arranged, which divided up the whole Middle East, drew new lines between the French, the Great Powers. | ||
| It's kind of existed there. | ||
| We said yesterday we had Ed Luson talking about the 1970s Arab oil embargo, that Arab oil embargo, all of a sudden Middle East came back front and center into American life, which it had not done really ever. | ||
| And then the Iranian hostage crisis, the Persian hostage crisis ended the 70s. | ||
| And here right now, President Trump just breaking all norms. | ||
| The thing to focus on, he is leading, he's saying, look, economics, prosperity can lead to peace. | ||
| And if people are incentivized and have skin in the game, they will have peace. | ||
| It's the best way to peace. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of things that people are unhappy about or uncomfortable about, I should say. | ||
| We'll see how those work at a time. | ||
| One of the ones is particularly a country like Qatar. | ||
| It now looks like front and center of all this. | ||
| But he ended... | ||
| As I think was very smart to end with MBZ in the UAE, MBZ, Mohammed bin Zayed, the strongest ally, not just strongest ally, someone held in great respect that punches way above their weight. | ||
| And you can see the respect President Trump had. | ||
| And some of those ceremonies are deeply profound of what the Arab nations were doing, deeply profound of what they think of President Trump as a man, as a leader. | ||
| As a leader of a country that has a stick-to-itiveness. | ||
| I think the drift of Biden and Obama and Bush, Clinton, reversed. | ||
| We started at a small scale in the first term because we weren't prepared in the fact that we didn't have time to pull teams together and have years to do this research. | ||
| It was a kind of a comfort behind victory. | ||
| But the four years that President Trump spent in the wilderness, It's going to become quite symbolic. | ||
| People will talk about that 100 years from now, what President Trump thought about, what he learned, what he observed, and now what he's putting in place. | ||
| Extraordinary. | ||
| At the same time, President Trump is saying, hey, there's 150 countries that Commerce Department treasurer all over are making deals, and he kind of put them on the clock. | ||
| Yo, boys, got a couple of weeks. | ||
| We're just not going to drag all this out. | ||
| Let's get focused. | ||
| You're not going to be the gating event for the United States of America. | ||
| If it's not done, guess what? | ||
| You're going to pay tariffs. | ||
| If you don't decide to sell here, fine. | ||
| Take it somewhere else. | ||
| At the same time, working on these major deals in East Asia with Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, India, and the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| Just absolutely extraordinary. | ||
| Breathtaking. | ||
| We started, and I wanted to start today because we love showing you both the high geopolitical and geostrategic, but then get into the bowels of it, the nuts and bolts. | ||
| And right now in the Budget Committee, as we've said, we support President Trump's priorities here. | ||
| We just think that this whole mishmash, and this plays to Johnson, you're seeing two types of leadership. | ||
| President Trump... | ||
| Stepping into the breach. | ||
| Here's how it's going to be. | ||
| Bringing people together. | ||
| But people have a sense of stability. | ||
| And you have these munchkins over here on the left kind of nipping at his heels. | ||
| But then you have the house with Johnson. | ||
| And having a career in making deals at Goldman Sachs and my own firm, it doesn't help to tap people along and kind of mislead them about what's really in there and hope it all comes together at the end because you have a time constraint. | ||
| It's just not the way President Trump rolls. | ||
| It's certainly not the way that you're taught and trained to get complex transactions done. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| Here we are on a Friday in a budget committee. | ||
| And he's got, I don't know, four people who are kind of hard-nosed. | ||
| And those people have a lot of credibility in this regard. | ||
| These are people that have historic concerns about deficits. | ||
| And it's just the math we're getting. | ||
| And the math that's coming out from independent sources show that there hasn't been enough true focus on cutting. | ||
| And where there has been cutting in Medicaid has been, quite frankly, all over the map. | ||
| And so that's why this thing, it's no need to force something that's terrible just to get it through because you're on some sort of deadline. | ||
| What's better is to get something that works and then you get over to the tax side. | ||
| I don't think—one of President Trump's priorities is no tax on Social Security. | ||
| This $4,000 for retirees is not no tax on Social Security. | ||
| No tax on Social Security means wait for it, read my lips. | ||
| Is that what Bush said? | ||
| No tax on Social Security. | ||
| But that's just one of many of the problems over there on the tax side. | ||
| So this thing's coming together. | ||
| Now, President Trump—here's my concern with this. | ||
| President Trump is redoing the commercial relationships of the world. | ||
| He's bringing world peace. | ||
| Remember, the first part of this is to stop the kinetic part of the Third World War. | ||
| The second part of this is to seal the border and deport 10 million illegal alien invaders, which you saw at the court, and Josh Hammer will be on later to talk about that. | ||
| The third is to get all this economic model, financial model, this fiasco he was dumped on. | ||
| So now, having spent four days... | ||
| Changing the direction of the world, and particularly in tamping down the Third World War, both the nuclear weapons with Persia. | ||
| They've got the Ukrainians talking in Istanbul right now with the Russians. | ||
| He's got the total redoing of the commercial relationships of the world on 50 countries, including the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| He flies back. | ||
| He gets back near midnight tonight. | ||
| I will tell you, that is a brutal flight back on a very uncomfortable... | ||
| He's got a fiasco created by Johnson and these clowns in the house that he's going to have to sort out. | ||
| Can anybody do anything that they don't need to depend upon Trump? | ||
| Can anybody just accomplish something and say, hey, you gave us marching orders. | ||
| Here's what we did. | ||
| We don't need you involved. | ||
| Because now... | ||
| Solving the problems of the world. | ||
| He's going to have to solve the problems of the Republican Party up on the Hill. | ||
| Short break. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | |
| Semaphore's got a great article about the bond market, about the 10-year Treasury pushing up near 4.5%, maybe over. | ||
| They're going to get a vote. | ||
| We talk about the Liz Truss situation. | ||
| That's not going to happen, but... | ||
| It's reacting not to the trade deals. | ||
| It's reacting to the spending. | ||
| Let's be honest about this. | ||
| Birchgold.com, The Road to Rio. | ||
| The Rio Reset, seventh free installment. | ||
| Get it, read it. | ||
| We're going to have The Road to Rio every other day from now until actually Rio. | ||
| The BRICS nations, many of whom are not our friends, are there to figure out how to get off the U.S. dollar. | ||
| Make sure you understand that. | ||
| Make sure you understand the process of why gold is a hedge. | ||
| Birchgold.com, promo code Bannon. | ||
| Check it out. | ||
| Get to know Philip Patrick and the team. | ||
| They're with the Budget Committee. | ||
| As soon as we see something fascinating, and if, Grace, you can livestream that on the other channels, people can dip in and out of it. | ||
|
unidentified
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We will. | |
| We're monitoring it. | ||
| Right now, four no votes on the committee itself by Republicans. | ||
| That means it's a... | ||
| If that was the whole, I mean, it doesn't come out of committee, we'll have to see what happens. | ||
| I think it's an all-day markup. | ||
| But the math still doesn't work, but we'll figure out, maybe they come up with some solutions. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| They've got a thing called reverse the curse. | ||
| It's a Jimmy Madison, James Madison quote that a public debt is a public curse. | ||
| Do you think they were a little divided? | ||
| And this is what I say, don't think the revolutionary generation, the founding fathers, it was a group hug. | ||
| No, it was not. | ||
| There were many of those guys that hated each other. | ||
| Hate it. | ||
| Good old-fashioned Old Testament hate. | ||
| Hamilton and Jefferson. | ||
| Jefferson and Adams. | ||
| Jimmy is saying that, hey, public debt's a public curse. | ||
| They've got a thing going on that can reverse the curse over at the Budget Committee to try to figure out this national debt. | ||
| Hamilton was the one that was a contrarian and said, no, if we want to become a manufacturing superpower, we have to have credit. | ||
| The way we have credit is we roll up all the revolutionary debts from the states, make it one big thing, and then start refinancing it in global capital markets. | ||
| Remember, the American Revolution started about taxes, paying for the French and Indian War. | ||
| The British Parliament thought we ought to throw a little something into the kitty. | ||
| The Americans thought we already threw enough into the kitty. | ||
| And to win our revolution, we needed a big assist by the French. | ||
| The French weren't doing it because they loved us. | ||
| They were doing it because they were at war with England. | ||
| And the payment and figuring out how to pay for those bonds is what brought on the French Revolution. | ||
| So this is all interconnected. | ||
| Folks, the budget committee today. | ||
| Tej Gill, you spent, correct me if I'm wrong, brother, 16 deployments. | ||
| As a gunman for the United States, six in Iraq, ten in Afghanistan, as a tip-of-the-spear combat veteran, your assessment of President Trump's tour of the Middle East this week, sir? | ||
| Yeah, that's right, Steve. | ||
| I was going back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 up until 2014. | ||
| I'm very excited about what Trump's doing in the Middle East. | ||
| The problem with the wars in the Middle East is we're not allowed to win them. | ||
| They're forever wars. | ||
| They just go on forever. | ||
| At one time, we were catching the same terrorists on one deployment. | ||
| We would catch them multiple times because it got turned into a catch-and-release program because of politics. | ||
| We're so heavy during the war. | ||
| And at the beginning of the war, I was so gung-ho to go over there. | ||
| One, because I was a young SEAL and I wanted to get into combat, but two, because of 9 /11. | ||
| And then around the time Benghazi happened, I started realizing that there was a lot of politics in these wars that shouldn't be there. | ||
| And I saw Trump said, "We're done with nation building and we're done with telling people how to live." That's amazing because we're doing it all wrong. | ||
| We start... | ||
| The nation building, and we start telling people how to live their lives during the middle of the war. | ||
| We're supposed to win the war and then bring peace, and then we can nation build, and then we can influence people how to live. | ||
| But we try to do it all at once. | ||
| It doesn't work out, and it's just a money-making machine for the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about at the end of World War II. | ||
| That's what all these wars are about. | ||
| I saw the welcome Trump got in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Qatar, and it was amazing. | ||
| They're calling him the president of presidents, the king of kings, the president of the world. | ||
| He's exactly right. | ||
| We need to let these people live their lives how they want. | ||
| We should actually be showing them how to live instead of telling them how to live. | ||
| We need to focus on America. | ||
| We need to make America thrive. | ||
| We need to make this place the ultimate place for prosperity for Americans and freedom for Americans. | ||
| And that's how you show other people how to live. | ||
| And then they will, by us leading by example, they will want to become like us instead of going over there, invading them, not winning, and then trying to force them. | ||
| Our policies on them through the State Department and the USAID. | ||
| And that's what we've been doing for decades. | ||
| And it does not work. | ||
| And the policies are all LGBTQ and all this progressive woke crap that these cultures are just not going to take. | ||
| Does it concern you? | ||
| I'm going to turn to coffee in a second. | ||
| Does it concern you that some of the nations that were underwriting the worst extremist elements... | ||
| Of radical jihad, do you think they've corrected themselves? | ||
| Do you think they're not doing that? | ||
| I mean, you were fighting over their bad hombres that got money from a lot of these guys, particularly Qatar. | ||
| Are you, in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, are you concerned about that? | ||
| Do you think President Trump's got a plan to work that through? | ||
| I am concerned about it, especially in Syria. | ||
| We have a former ISIS commander who is cutting people's heads off. | ||
| He's now running Syria, but I trust Trump. | ||
| And that's the bottom line. | ||
| He's got a plan. | ||
| He's an amazing guy. | ||
| Everything he does, it turns to gold. | ||
| They tried to put him in jail. | ||
| They tried to kill him. | ||
| They couldn't do it. | ||
| He just arrived over in the Middle East, and he was treated like an actual king. | ||
| They're giving him airplanes, parades. | ||
| It's incredible what's going on in the Middle East. | ||
| So I believe Trump has a plan. | ||
| Yes, I am concerned about the extremists in a lot of these countries. | ||
| I think Trump has a plan, and I am willing to just sit back, watch, and trust him, because, like I said, everything he does turns a goal. | ||
| Before we turn to Warpath Coffee, yes or no, is this what you voted for? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| Talk to me about, and by the way, this guy's got skin in the game. | ||
| A lot of skin. | ||
| Talk to me about my Warpath Coffee. | ||
| Actually, first time I got... | ||
| Somebody brought, I got some K-cups. | ||
| The K-cups are amazing. | ||
| And it's a compliment I've gotten from people around town this week that we've given some of the bags out to. | ||
| People are coming back. | ||
| The champagne of coffee. | ||
| You have broken, you, Taze Gill, single-handedly, have broken this because people realize, why do I put cream and sugar in the coffee? | ||
| I put cream and sugar in coffee. | ||
| They cut the acidity, they cut the acid-like taste of it, like the bitterness of certain national brands that happen to be green. | ||
| You've done away with that, and people love it. | ||
| Talk to me about the coffee. | ||
| What are your new offerings? | ||
| Yeah, right now the newest thing we have are these mugs. | ||
| They wake up, win, repeat, and then we have one with the rules. | ||
| It says never lose, win everything, conquer anything. | ||
| Conquer everything. | ||
| That's the rules to live by. | ||
| One thing I want to say, though, Steve, is I have not done it single-handedly. | ||
| With your help and the War Room Posse's help, we've grown this company, and now we're making huge amounts of this incredible coffee. | ||
| So the War Room Posse and you were a major hand in all this still to this day. | ||
| So the website is warpath.coffee and use forward slash Bannon. | ||
| I'm sorry, forward slash war room. | ||
| And that'll take you to a landing page that is especially for the war room posse. | ||
| So warpath.coffee forward slash war room. | ||
| And we're doing 20% off right now for the war room posse. | ||
| And it goes back and forth usually between 15 and 20%, but it's 20% off. | ||
| And last night I looked and we're at 9,800 five-star reviews. | ||
| So we're almost about to break the 10,000 review mark. | ||
| It's pretty big for having that on our website. | ||
| Usually you only see those kind of numbers on an Amazon store, and that's on our website, and we don't pay anybody to give us those reviews. | ||
| We just send out an email chain after you buy from us, and only 13% of the people answer the email and give us a review. | ||
| Here's what I love about it. | ||
| The people coming back to me are Coffee aficionados. | ||
| I mean, they're the ones up at dawn, up at 5 o 'clock in the morning, putting a pot on. | ||
| These people know coffee, and they drink great coffee, and they're sitting here going, this is extraordinary. | ||
| So you've just done an incredible, incredible job. | ||
| And yes, the Board of Posse loves it, been there, supportive, going to be even more supportive in the future. | ||
| I obviously... | ||
| Love it. | ||
| And remember, the dark roast, Mariner's Blend, the one I worked on specifically with Tej, I think it was 18 months of back and forth until he absolutely perfected and we said, this is it. | ||
| That's the level of diligence. | ||
| Talk real quickly. | ||
| Give us 30 seconds on how you roast this because everybody asked me about this. | ||
| How do you roast this that's different than anybody else? | ||
| Yeah, well, first off, we use premium beans. | ||
| So we don't buy cheap beans that you can get for a dollar a pound. | ||
| We're actually buying premium level. | ||
| Green beans. | ||
| That's how we start out. | ||
| And then we roast it on a perforated drum. | ||
| And by doing that, we don't burn the beans at all. | ||
| So a lot of times when you use a solid drum, even if you roast most of the bean, if you caramelize it, the tips of the beans get burnt. | ||
| It's called tipping. | ||
| And that creates acidity and bitterness. | ||
| And that's why you need milk and sugar with most coffee. | ||
| So we caramelize our beans. | ||
| They don't carbonize it. | ||
| You know, basically, we don't turn our beans into charcoals. | ||
| We make them nice and golden brown. | ||
| And that's how we get rid of the acidic taste and the bitterness. | ||
| And that's why it's so smooth. | ||
| We roast it on a perforated drum. | ||
| And the drum is actually, it's the actual drum in the machine. | ||
| It's an old-school Burns drum. | ||
| And then in the rest of the machine, it's modernized. | ||
| So that is how we make it taste so good. | ||
| It's a roasting technique we use. | ||
| And most roasters don't do that. | ||
| That's why when you go to a restaurant or a coffee shop, they offer you cream, sugar, and all that stuff in there, which you don't need. | ||
| So you can drink our coffee straight black and make it healthy. | ||
| Where do they go, Tej? | ||
| We've got to bounce. | ||
| Where do they go? | ||
| Warpath.coffee forward slash war room. | ||
| Love you, brother. | ||
| An old gunman taught himself new tricks. | ||
| Became one of the great coffee companies around. | ||
| Short break. | ||
| Back in the warm with Brat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Life or death. | |
| I challenge my Republican colleagues to come and meet with some of my constituents. | ||
| Perhaps you represent a different segment of America. | ||
| Okay, the budget continues going. | ||
| The Democrats continue to make speeches. | ||
| People that didn't touch this forever. | ||
| President Trump's got a true social out. | ||
| Mentions grandstanders. | ||
| Mr. President, I don't think these folks are grandstanding. | ||
| Democrats are. | ||
| Forget that. | ||
| I'm talking about people. | ||
| The math simply doesn't work right now. | ||
| There hasn't been smart cuts. | ||
| Haven't been enough cuts. | ||
| Just look at the math. | ||
| Look at Independent. | ||
| Do any assessment. | ||
| Let's have OMB, what Russ Vogt's saying, are showing people. | ||
| Because what we want to do is make our own decisions, have the president make his own decisions and not have pressure from the bond market, which we're going to have. | ||
| You already have it. | ||
| It's already almost at 4.5%. | ||
| And that is not related to President Trump's restructuring of the commercial relationships of the world to benefit American citizens, as it should, since the weight of everything is on your shoulders. | ||
| But you just saw by the true social he just gave from the plane, he's going to have to get involved. | ||
| Right? | ||
| What he's saying is that I don't want to get involved. | ||
| I want you guys to take care of it. | ||
| Take care of it now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| The fiasco, as we talked about, is upon us. | ||
| There's an article up in Axios, the lead story, talks about the second hundred days, and I make the point that this is more important than the first hundred because this is where his legacy will be codified on a number of things. | ||
| Number one, the big, beautiful bill or the legislative part of the economics will basically set the stage for his entire third term with the tax cuts and particularly the trajectory. | ||
| Of deficits and deficit reduction. | ||
| So that's that middle line. | ||
| Number two is stopping the kinetic part of the Third World War, which a magnificent start, a really kind of second step this week in the Middle East. | ||
| More of that to continue. | ||
| Then you've got the deportations, what he's trying to do, and that's leading us to the constitutional crisis of his powers, his Article II powers. | ||
| To actually do this as Commander-in-Chief, and that is Josh Hammer's going to be on with us. | ||
| That turns out what the argument yesterday at the court was about. | ||
| And this is hurtling, I think, to a constitutional crisis, particularly when President Trump, write this down with your number two pencil, because you heard it here first a couple of weeks ago when we got D.C. Drano on. | ||
| I believe they're going to be suspending the writ of habeas corpus. | ||
| He's going to have to because these courts are going to continue to try to jam him up. | ||
| Anyway, let me get Dave Brad in here. | ||
| Dave, the Budget Committee right now, there's three or four votes not out there. | ||
| There's probably pressure. | ||
| They're getting phone calls. | ||
| But let's just step back. | ||
| Does the math work here for President Trump's overall objective? | ||
| And this comes from President Trump and his Treasury Secretary. | ||
| This is not a construct of War Room or Steve Bannon. | ||
| This is theirs. | ||
| Six and a half percent. | ||
| A deficit with 6.5%, 7% because of what Biden did to the country to get it down to 3.5%. | ||
| You're not going to get to a balanced budget, but at least get the deficit to 3.5%. | ||
| Anything that doesn't get us there has got to be jettisoned. | ||
| Do you think right now where we see this that we're making progress? | ||
| Dave Bratt, you've been in those rooms before, sir. | ||
| No, this was, you know, you opened up with Trump. | ||
| Who strides the world like a colossus or whatever. | ||
| I mean, everybody is deferring to him globally. | ||
| And when he came in on the tariff deal, you saw the huge amount of deference the American people paid to him. | ||
| And gave him a shot to work things out. | ||
| And so the House, the math doesn't work because the math is just a bunch of gimmicks. | ||
| The more you look under the hood at this thing, Kim Strassel's got a great piece in the Wall Street Journal today, so I ripped their heads off yesterday, but she starts off the whole opening gambit was just $1.5 trillion. | ||
| And then the moderates, they're always called moderates. | ||
| The moderates are not orthodox Republicans. | ||
| You should hear all the stuff they're asking for. | ||
| You heard yesterday, we're going to fund... | ||
| I mean, you've got to be kidding me. | ||
| So the math is all gimmicky. | ||
| Strassel's got a good piece. | ||
| Politico's got a good piece out. | ||
| It's biased, of course, but it's got, you know, all the gains come in to get some votes in the first four or five years. | ||
| Then all the reforms come in in the last five years. | ||
| And Chip Roy and that crew and the budget panel, they're finally sticking up for the American people. | ||
| A bunch of my old friends in the Freedom Caucus, they're always solid. | ||
| But you just heard the Congresswoman there yelling about Medicaid and the Republicans are crushing people on Medicaid. | ||
| It's not true at all, right? | ||
| In the Politico piece, there's $300 billion gain from Medicaid just for reducing. | ||
| The only requirements are people have to work 80 hours a month or sign up for part-time education. | ||
| The Republicans rightly are saying, no, no, no, no. | ||
| You're not entitled to pay checks from the American people, right? | ||
| That seems to be the assumption. | ||
| And the Republicans need to fight that. | ||
| And then there's a state check on Medicaid where they're going to verify addresses. | ||
| And Politico, of course, mentions that as a pain, right? | ||
| You're going to verify fraud to make sure we're not sending checks to ineligible people on Medicaid. | ||
| And then the left goes off and calls this, you know, we're not taking care of the least of these. | ||
| The whole point is if you're going to take care of Social Security and Medicare, you better set up a machine. | ||
| And so Trump is thinking huge on the world stage. | ||
| He came in with huge pieces. | ||
| And the House has been trained in this, you know, myopic science mindset. | ||
| Just tweak, tweak, tweak little changes along the way. | ||
| No one's thinking huge. | ||
| We should have come in. | ||
| This was the time under Trump where the House and the Senate come in with major league transformational tax packages that do benefit everybody. | ||
| And, you know, the tax cuts can generate some growth. | ||
| But I've heard some of the guys we know. | ||
| Saying they're going to put out a study next week. | ||
| You know, some of the nationally known economists. | ||
| And I heard Newt on the TV this morning. | ||
| And he mentioned all the, you know, we're going to get the tax cuts through. | ||
| They always mention all that. | ||
| And Newt failed to mention spending. | ||
| And so no one wants to deliver the hard news, right? | ||
| So the Freedom Caucus folks... | ||
| Hang on, hang on, hang on. | ||
| The old playbook, it's called Supply Side Cut. | ||
| Besson said it the last time. | ||
| I agree with him. | ||
| The supply side cut should be on incentivizing work, but particularly incentivizing capital for investment, and to make that permanent. | ||
| My concern is, particularly for businesses, the supply side part of this is not permanent. | ||
| To do that, you'd have to have... | ||
| Either further spending cuts or revenue increases in other areas. | ||
| Like, I don't know, randomly, the upper bracket. | ||
| I'm just throwing out a random thing. | ||
| Which, folks, trust me, to make the math work, unless you want $60 trillion of debt, we're going to go there. | ||
| We're going to get there eventually. | ||
| It's a winding road, but we're going to get there. | ||
| What about that? | ||
| Just talk to me, because the supply side guys always say, oh, I'm going to get the growth rate up. | ||
| And the growth rate up with a tax structure you've got, you're going to generate more cash. | ||
| So how do we get the growth rate up to 2.5%, 3%, 3.5%? | ||
| Remember, in 2019, in the fourth quarter, I think Trump's growth rate was... | ||
| Three and a half percent. | ||
| And that's what Janet Yellen is, the Fed, taking a trillion dollars off the balance sheet that caused headwinds. | ||
| Had to be done, but his growth rate could have been higher because of his tax cuts the first time. | ||
| Now, how do you make this more supply side by making it permanent? | ||
| Dave Brat, you're an old supply side. | ||
| You're an old Jack Kemp aficionado. | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| And every time I come on The War Room, my goal is to show that productivity's been going down for 70 years because we've been doing Keynesian economics and not supply-side stuff. | ||
| But this budget is all gimmicky, right? | ||
| That $300 billion I just mentioned from Medicaid, that only kicks in in the fifth year. | ||
| So the $300 billion could be $600 billion immediately. | ||
| In savings that go toward permanent tax cuts. | ||
| The SALT thing, over 10 is a half a trillion dollars. | ||
| And that's at the lower number. | ||
| That's like a 30k deduction, whatever. | ||
| And Lawler from New York is just going all out. | ||
| He's at war. | ||
| And Lawler had a comment, I got it here somewhere. | ||
| He says, people are leaving New York because of the cost of living. | ||
| Well, the solution to that is to just pay New Yorkers, right? | ||
| Subsidize failing states and the poor. | ||
| He wants $80,000 salt thing. | ||
| The average American doesn't even make $80,000, right? | ||
| I mean, so, yes, we need to incentivize capital, capital investment, business, and only that. | ||
| Not the tax breaks for the rich, the pass-through stuff. | ||
| It's a good thing the American people don't understand that. | ||
| That huge thing goes to what's called compensation to hedge funds and private equity and venture capital on their income, roughly. | ||
| And they get a 20% rate and not at the higher rate. | ||
| And so, you know, if that was going to manufacturing or capital... | ||
| People or whatever, I'd have less of an issue. | ||
| I'd still have an issue because it's not fair. | ||
| But our folks should have come in with a Milton Friedman-esque type of flat tax that everybody pays. | ||
| And the American people like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if Trump delivered a flat tax across the board... | |
| You're going to your Milton Friedman. | ||
| Your Austrian school economics is coming through. | ||
| And it's fair. | ||
| It's fair. | ||
| No one's going to argue. | ||
| And then you do a negative income tax for the poor, and boom. | ||
| Then you stimulate the economy. | ||
| And everyone, it ends the class war, and the left is out of business. | ||
| They have no messaging anymore. | ||
| They're done. | ||
| What do you think is going to happen today in this markup? | ||
| I mean, are we going to get through this, or what's going to happen? | ||
| President Trump, I was going to put some pressure on some folks, but I think, Russ, Someone's got to walk the president through the entire package and what it means for deficits. | ||
| No one's countered our argument that this is $2 trillion of deficits or more every year. | ||
| We're not bending the arc. | ||
| We're not going from the... | ||
| And this is their number, not my number. | ||
| 6.5% deficit to GDP down to 3.5%. | ||
| I don't see that happening. | ||
| Have you seen any number that shows that this initiates the journey and the process to get there? | ||
| No, it goes in the wrong direction. | ||
| Everything's moving toward increasing tax deductions instead of going to the supply side. | ||
| In 2017, we got rid of $1.5 trillion in the Tax Act, and now we're only getting rid of half a trillion. | ||
| So we're losing a trillion on there. | ||
| That's just the tax piece. | ||
| And so, no, I think there's going to be some holdouts, and I hope there are, because the orthodoxy of republicanism is tax cuts, but it's the spending first, right? | ||
| The idea, you know, just think of the founding fathers or anybody that has a brain in their head, or any of the great leaders, you know, we had 60 years ago, etc. | ||
| This would have been absurd to them. | ||
| I mean, can you picture a Jefferson or a great mind going along with this just gimmicky stuff to buy off voting blocks? | ||
| And it doesn't work. | ||
| You're becoming Democrats and leftists, and you're just moving in the wrong direction on the logic of what we have to have in place to have a great country. | ||
| And so I think there's going to be some holdouts on the Freedom Caucus side, and they're going to call them every name in the book. | ||
| The salt guys and the eastern coast guys and the moderates, supposedly, they're holding out also. | ||
| But they're holding out for non-Orthodox. | ||
| I'm missing it. | ||
| I'm missing it because I don't know how the Salt guys justify. | ||
| They've won the argument at the lower brackets. | ||
| They're basically, correct me if I'm wrong, this SALT argument is, I'll tell you what, hang on. | ||
| I'm going to bring you back afterwards because the SALT argument, I think where they're arguing now is protecting the wealthy, right? | ||
| I don't think it's about the middle class and the working class and the SALT agreement. | ||
| I think they're already up to $30,000 or $40,000. | ||
| Anyway, hang on for a second. | ||
| So this is President Trump. | ||
| Having changed the direction of the world is coming back to making sure he's putting guys on the clock on trade deals and the big, beautiful reconciliation process. | ||
| Make sure you're probably going to have to be at the ramparts with us next week. | ||
| Make sure you're available and not chasing somebody that's taking your title and going to a hard money lender and got a second mortgage out on your house. | ||
| National debt's already a big enough second mortgage on it. | ||
| Don't let them do it. | ||
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| Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security is simply untruthful. | ||
| You cannot cut Social Security anyway. | ||
| And, you know, what this boils down to is a complete... | ||
| We're operating on two different universes. | ||
| You think the tax money is yours, government is your God, and that's what your bottom line that you have. | ||
| You supported an administration and Joe Biden that trainwrecked this country by letting 15 to 20 million illegals in this country where we have paid a price and are continuing to pay a price. | ||
| Now, where are we on this bill? | ||
| The tax cuts are great. | ||
| The tax money is the taxpayers, not the government bureaucracy. | ||
| And what we're dealing with now is so many good things that are happening. | ||
| You can use class warfare, rich, poor, black, white. | ||
| You're off base. | ||
| 77 million people told you you were off base, and you're still off base. | ||
| But here's the questions I would ask, and Mr. Chairman, I know you know this, is that... | ||
| Is it right for healthy, able-bodied Americans that could work that don't work? | ||
| There's over 25 million healthy, able-bodied Americans that don't work. | ||
| Is it right for them to have a paycheck? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Is it right if you're an illegal alien, which the right side of this aisle, my Democrat friends led in this country, if you're an illegal, is it right to have illegals? | ||
| Cash and checks with money we don't have. | ||
| And to phase this in for four years, and we're telling a healthy American that you've got four years to get a job? | ||
| No. | ||
| The payment stops now. | ||
| If you're illegal, the payment stops now. | ||
| On the IRA, a lot of these credits have been in existence for 30 and 40 years. | ||
| And you're talking about giveaways. | ||
| We want to help those who really need help. | ||
| And that's the heart of this. | ||
| Sadly, I'm a hard no until we get this ironed out. | ||
| And I think we can. | ||
| We've made progress. | ||
| But it just takes time. | ||
| And it's time that if we're going to continue to have just what I mentioned, able-bodied Americans getting checks, illegals getting checks, subsidies that go to corporations that shouldn't get them, I'm out. | ||
| So thank you, Mr. Chairman, again for what you've done, and thank you for this budget committee. | ||
| I yield. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thank the gentleman from South Carolina and now yield to Mr. Paul Tonko from New York for three minutes. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | ||
| I'm in strong opposition. | ||
| You heard Ralph Norman there. | ||
| He's a hard no. | ||
| Some of the issues with Medicaid, you know, we want to protect Medicaid, particularly for MAGA hardworking folks, but... | ||
| You've got to have requirements. | ||
| You've got to work. | ||
| You've got to have a job. | ||
| You can't be laying around and have the government just sit there and pay for your medical. | ||
| It can't happen. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Some people may say that's tough or cruel, but hey, it's a tough world. | ||
| And the requirements of God, I think they don't kick into 2029. | ||
| That's what Ralph Norman's talking about. | ||
| There's so much other... | ||
| They brought this so much other things in here that just got to be wrung out and got to be wrung out now because we're paying, we're borrowing from China to pay for all this. | ||
| Well, Ralph Norman is great, and people need to follow people like that and compliment them for doing a tough job. | ||
| He's about ready to have heaven and earth come down on his head. | ||
| Tonight. | ||
| The leadership, they always position the House and then the freedom fighters right at the end of this process, right? | ||
| So it starts at $1.5 trillion. | ||
| Now it's down to zero. | ||
| And we might actually end up increasing spending. | ||
| And then the tax side that we just described. | ||
| But what he just said was my little sermon yesterday. | ||
| You guys are lying. | ||
| He told the Democrats straight to their face, you're lying. | ||
| We are not cutting Medicaid, requiring people to work while they get a check. | ||
| We're helping them, right? | ||
| We're helping the poor, sending them a check. | ||
| And so saying you've got to work, I mean, the moral case couldn't be more clear. | ||
| And that's what I'm saying. | ||
| The Republicans need to stand up on these points and simplify this tax code and get rid of this gimmicky stuff. | ||
| The flat thing I just throw out as an idea. | ||
| But the one good thing about the flat tax idea is you get rid of all the lobbyists. | ||
| You want to talk about getting rid of regular... | ||
| We've got to clear them out. | ||
| They're just living. | ||
| And the lobbyists for the billionaire tax cut guys, they're loud and vocal right now. | ||
| They're all saying, I'm not going to name names right here, but they're all saying let's just pass this bill and get on and we'll improve the tax cuts later. | ||
| There's nothing about spending from any of them. | ||
| And if we don't solve this spending piece, we're in big trouble. | ||
| We haven't even brought up entitlements, right? | ||
| Social Security, Medicare. | ||
| That's coming at a later date. | ||
| And that's binding, too. | ||
| Just like the bond market. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're going to have a tough one. | ||
| We're going to make sure, hopefully, President Trump gets all the information. | ||
| I can see already he's getting a little worked up. | ||
| We're going to have... | ||
| Can we put up the president to let you know he's on point? | ||
| He put up a tweet just a second ago. | ||
| Has anybody noticed that Taylor Swift is not, when he said she's not hot, she's like finished? | ||
| President Trump, Commander-in-Chief and King of the Trolls, just unbelievable. | ||
| Getting on Taylor Swift. | ||
| But hey, we told you Taylor Swift was all plotting to go campaign for Biden and Kamala and got waved off when people talked to her about the math. | ||
| So President Trump is right there. | ||
| Dave Bratt, where do people go to get your charts, all your analysis? | ||
| I'm going to try to get you back on tomorrow because this weekend I can tell you this budget thing is going to be a topic of conversation with President Trump. | ||
| Yeah, great. | ||
| Everybody get educated. | ||
| I put my charts up from the other day on the Great Depression up on X and Getter. | ||
| Brat economics and the most important thing is to spread the war room. | ||
| Spread this platform because you see the knowledge you're getting. | ||
| And if the country doesn't get this stuff, we can't fix it. | ||
| Amen, brother. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Trying to get people out there. | ||
| Trying to get them more up to speed. | ||
| That's one of the reasons I say you want a quick tutorial. | ||
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