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unidentified
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|
unidentified
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Our guest is the president of Club for Growth, Dave McIntosh, joining us. | ||
| We'll talk about the group in a bit. | ||
| He served in Congress as a former U.S. Representative for the state of Indiana. | ||
| Dave McIntosh joining us on Washington Road. | ||
| Great to be with you, Pedro. | ||
| As a former congressman, how do you look at things like shutdown, particularly what you're seeing now? | ||
| Right now, I think we're seeing the Democrats holding out for a position that can't be maintained in simple extending the government services. | ||
| And we went through shutdowns when I was there, and more famously in 2012 about Obamacare. | ||
| The people don't want the government to be held hostage for one political party's agenda or the other. | ||
| And so I think what they should do is reopen the government, have people go back to work, and then negotiate what do they want to do about COVID subsidies? | ||
| Do they want to extend them? | ||
| Do they want to stop them? | ||
| Because we're through, finished with COVID. | ||
| But to shut down the government, most people think, why? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| It looks dysfunctional in Washington. | ||
| Now, the other thing is I was just out in California and Texas. | ||
| Folks outside of Washington aren't really thinking about it that much. | ||
| It doesn't affect their daily lives. | ||
| And so they view it as kind of a political stagecraft. | ||
| When it comes to the subsidies, which are at the center of this fight, because Obamacare has been along so long, is it pragmatic to consider complete elimination of them at this point, do you think? | ||
| Well, I think what it is, Pedro, is these were additional subsidies that were put in place during COVID. | ||
| Now that we don't have COVID anymore, people are saying, well, go back to where it was before. | ||
| And is that a good move then? | ||
| Oh, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Well, especially when you've got $3, $4 trillion of debt that's being piled up every year in the budget. | ||
| Congress has to figure out what are we going to hold back? | ||
| What are we going to stop spending? | ||
| How do we make these programs more efficient, more effective? | ||
| You put out a recent piece just this week from The Hill. | ||
| Just the headline that's attached to it, I'll show the folks at home saying Democrats fight to keep COVID era handouts for rich, illegal immigrant health care. | ||
| Can you explain that last part? | ||
| Because this has been a lot of discussion about what this actually means. | ||
| I think part of what we're seeing is during COVID, they opened it up to everybody. | ||
| Whether or not you're a citizen, illegal aliens would qualify for it. | ||
| And today, the sentiment in the country is much, much different towards that. | ||
| And part of it was you had four years of open borders under President Biden, and the American people said, this is not what we want in our country. | ||
| It's time to actually go back to enforcing the laws. | ||
| If you're not here legally, you shouldn't be getting the benefits. | ||
| Do you think that when you hear Republicans like yourself say that, is it they talk about, because Democrats will say, well, this really only applies to, say, care that's done in emergency rooms that was passed under President Reagan or certain states that spend their own money and get Medicare money back. | ||
| So when you say that illegal health or health care for illegals, it's actually kind of a misconception of what Republican messaging is. | ||
| Well, no, I think the Republican messaging is right on. | ||
| When you say the states use their own money and then reimburse themselves with Medicaid, that means they're using taxpayer dollars. | ||
| And that's what Congress now is saying. | ||
| We're cutting that off. | ||
| We're not going to spend that. | ||
| At that point, then, if the shutdown continues, is this something you would support as far as continuation? | ||
| Or are we at a point where some kind of discussion has to take place to reopen things and get things rolling again? | ||
| I think what they should do is reopen and then go negotiate issues like what are we going to do about COVID subsidies. | ||
| Interestingly, President Trump's put on the table, if you're going to keep the government shut down, I'm going to start furloughing unnecessary employees. | ||
| As you know, people who are essential to the U.S. government continue to work even in a shutdown. | ||
| And so that what I kept hearing out in California and Texas was, well, if they're not essential, why do we have them? | ||
| Especially since we have this tremendous debt that gets being piled up every year. | ||
| So I think the president's kind of put on the table, look, Democrats, if you're going to shut down the government in order to try to get your policy initiatives, I'm going to use that opportunity to try start right-sizing the government. | ||
| It was the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries yesterday. | ||
| He talked about the president, his role that he should be taking at this point when it comes to the shutdown. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| Get your thoughts on it. | ||
| Donald Trump definitively needs to get involved. | ||
| He needs to get off the sidelines, get off the golf course, and actually decide to end the shutdown that he's created, that he has allowed to happen. | ||
| We know that House and Senate Republicans don't do anything without getting permission from their boss, Donald J. Trump. | ||
| And the reason why there have been no negotiations, zero negotiations, since Republicans shut the government down is because Donald Trump clearly wants the government shut down. | ||
| He wants to inflict pain on the American people. | ||
| And this will not change until Donald Trump gives Republicans permission to sit down with Democrats. | ||
| That's the perspective of the House Minority Leader. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| But he loses all credibility when he says Donald Trump shut down the government when it's the Democrats in the Senate just today refusing to reopen it. | ||
| So that's why he's in the minority. | ||
| Dave McIntosh is with us. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about the shutdown and other matters of politics, you can do so on the phone lines. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| And Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| And you can text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| As we mentioned at the top of the program, you are the president for Club for Growth. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| We are the largest conservative political organization, bigger than the Coke groups, bigger than others. | ||
| We're not affiliated directly with the party committees, the RNC. | ||
| We run independent campaigns for free market, limited government candidates all around the country. | ||
| Last cycle, we put into the elections about $160 million over the two years and ended up winning 77% of our races. | ||
| So we're good at what we do. | ||
| What we stand for is balanced budget, lower taxes, less regulation, reducing the spending so that we can eliminate the debt. | ||
| We're also free trade. | ||
| We think that helps benefit the country and actually creates jobs here. | ||
| One of the things we did, Pedro, was in the tax bill supported a 100% expensing of building new factories. | ||
| And that's another way of creating jobs here in the U.S., bringing back a lot of our economic activity. | ||
| As far as tariffs, what's one of the president's large efforts when it comes to that? | ||
| What do you think about where he is today on tariffs? | ||
| You know, and President Trump has actually convinced me in cases like China, where there's also a national security concern, that we should use tariffs. | ||
| We should use every tool possible to protect America's national security interests. | ||
| I think getting to a negotiation with other countries that have tariffed our goods where we get to zero-0 is the right result with our allies, with Canada, Mexico, Switzerland. | ||
| And I think he should just keep negotiating. | ||
| You said President Trump convinced you, were you on the fence initially, particularly when it came to China and how he approached that? | ||
| Yeah, traditionally, the Club for Growth had a position that let's keep tariffs low. | ||
| Other countries may tariff us, but it'll be good for the world economy. | ||
| And he changed my mind. | ||
| How specifically? | ||
| Well, that there is a national security component there and that we should try to reach parity, ideally zero-zero parity. | ||
| But if other countries are tariffing our goods, then we probably do need to put in a tariff to get them back to the negotiating table. | ||
| For all the talk on tariffs, what have we seen as actual results, do you think, that people could say, you know, with all the money or at least the efforts on tariffs, what's the end result? | ||
| Is there something measurable there? | ||
| I think what you see often is uncertainty in the marketplace, and especially as tariffs may go up and then back down. | ||
| I think one of the things that the president says is we're gaining revenue from some of those tariffs. | ||
| Now, what that means is American companies, American citizens are paying more for their goods. | ||
| And so we would prefer to reduce it down to zero-zeros so that you essentially give people a tax cut. | ||
| One more question about the shutdown. | ||
| Being a former legislator yourself, the House Speaker for now has kept members home. | ||
| Is that a good look? | ||
| I think what Mike's doing is saying we've voted multiple times to reopen the government. | ||
| Now it's up to the Senate. | ||
| And with the Senate not taking any action on that bill, I don't need my members back here. | ||
| As soon as the Senate votes to reopen the government, he'll call them back. | ||
| Again, Dave McIntosh, along with us for this discussion. | ||
| Our first call for you comes from Cal. | ||
| Cal's in Maryland on our Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Cal, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Pedro. | |
| How are you? | ||
| My main question is, you know, especially living here in the D.C., Maryland, Virginia area, we feel the shutdown very strongly because there's a lot of federal employees. | ||
| And, you know, my main concern as an independent is why aren't, of course, both sides doing more. | ||
| But what's really prevalent is, you know, the Republicans, you know, they're home, you know, doing their thing. | ||
| But if they really cared about the, you know, the citizens of this country, the government workers, they would be here in D.C. negotiating. | ||
| I know Mike Johnson has been out there showing, you know, kind of having his talking points, but having his members here in DC making those points with him maybe would make a little bit difference. | ||
| But I think we need to be put a party aside and come together for the American people, for the American workers. | ||
| It's really, really disheartening, you know, what's happening in the country at the moment. | ||
| Kyle, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Thank you, Kyle. | ||
| I think you've got a good point. | ||
| That's why I would hope that the Senate Democrats would just say, okay, yes, we'll reopen the government. | ||
| That's a simple little vote. | ||
| We'll just keep spending what we are spending, and then we'll negotiate for changes separately from that. | ||
| That's where they would get back to work representing the interest of their constituents, and both parties could then come together and negotiate what to do in the future. | ||
| It was Senator Thun on X saying, I'm not sure how much clear I can be. | ||
| I can give it a try. | ||
| I'm willing to sit down with Democrats to discuss that growing unaffordability and unsustainability of Obamacare. | ||
| It's a system they created. | ||
| I'm happy to hear them out. | ||
| Heck, I'm willing to give them a vote. | ||
| Say that's true. | ||
| What should be at the center of these negotiations the other day? | ||
| Yeah, I think there are a lot of reforms to the Obamacare. | ||
| First of all, we don't need the COVID-era subsidies because COVID's over. | ||
| And then second, what they should do is start bringing more free market principles into it where people have a little skin in the game before they go to the doctor's office. | ||
| And what we're seeing now is a lot of the Obamacare regulations have made both Medicaid and the private sector care unaffordable for a lot of people. | ||
| And so what we should do is go in and look how is the government-run health care system, which is essentially what Obamacare is, costing people and giving them less care. | ||
| We had a couple of people call in this morning saying that for all the talk about reforms, that Republicans specifically don't have a plan for health care. | ||
| Would you consider that a true statement at this point? | ||
| I think you talk to different Republicans. | ||
| They've got a lot of good ideas. | ||
| One of them would be to increase the use of the health savings accounts and make those tax subsidized there, where individuals are responsible for picking and choosing in the marketplace what type of health care they need. | ||
| Chris is next. | ||
| Chris is in Massachusetts, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello there. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Vanjo. | |
| I just got a couple of questions that you asked him about. | ||
| One was tariffs. | ||
| Now, going back to your allusion, George Washington did it to fund it. | ||
| Now, tariffs is a tax on the people. | ||
| Everyone's saying that we're making money, but all we're doing is taking money from the people already. | ||
| So is that a yes or a no? | ||
| Is it a tax on the people or are they getting it from the other countries? | ||
| That's one of my questions for them. | ||
| And the other thing when you said about the health share, the illegal aliens, it is on the books that they are not allowed to accept it. | ||
| So why can't they put more refunds in to go into hospitals and stopping them instead of doing what they're doing? | ||
| And the last one is for the shutdown. | ||
| All they got to do is get to build a bit of a filibuster. | ||
| It's simple. | ||
| And if they do that, they can pass a lot. | ||
| They can open it. | ||
| Everything will open right up. | ||
| But they don't need a party once they cut off their left arm. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Those are the three questions. | ||
| So let me talk a little bit about the tariffs. | ||
| The first question. | ||
| We say there's a tariff on goods coming from China, so people think that's a tariff on China. | ||
| And to some extent, they'll lower their prices to be competitive here in the marketplace. | ||
| So companies that come from China or other countries take a little bit of the hit of the tariff, but the tariffs themselves are actually paid by Americans when the good or the product or the service is brought into the country. | ||
| And so that is a tax that Americans end up paying. | ||
| Overall, one of the things that people who support the use of tariffs want to increase the cost of goods coming in from other countries so that American companies can be more competitive with them. | ||
| In the end, that ends up distorting the economy, and we end up losing overall in terms of economic growth. | ||
| The Supreme Court said to hear a case concerning the president's tariff policy. | ||
| That will be on November 5th. | ||
| From your perspective, your club's perspective, what's at stake there concerning the tariffs? | ||
| I think what the court's going to look at is should these tariffs be voted on by Congress, by the Senate and the House, or have they delegated the power to the President to set the tariffs? | ||
| And if they did delegate that, what limits or what are there in terms of how much unilateral use of the tariffs the president has? | ||
| That's less about the question of whether tariffs are good or bad. | ||
| That's more about the question of which branch has the responsibility for imposing tariffs. | ||
| The Constitution says Congress has to pass them. | ||
| They, over the years, have passed bills saying the president can when there's a national security issue. | ||
| And I think the court's going to look at that and say, what are the boundaries around that delegation? | ||
| Is that an appropriate delegation? | ||
| And how much authority did they delegate? | ||
| There's a story on the upcoming case saying that it's small businesses challenging those global tariffs, urging the court to affirm lower court rulings that the import levies amount to a massive illegal tax on American companies. | ||
| What do you think of that characterization? | ||
| Well, obviously that's their view because they're being forced to pay these tariffs. | ||
| Whether illegal or not, I think that will be the question before the court. | ||
| What the president has asserted is there are national security concerns. | ||
| He believes that Congress has given him the authority to put tariffs in place when that's the case. | ||
| Is your organization filing an amicus brief on it? | ||
| No, we're staying out of the courts. | ||
| Right now we're starting to pivot, Pedro, and think about the elections that are coming up. | ||
| We'll talk about that in a little bit. | ||
| Let's hear from Peter in New York, Republican line for Dave McIntosh. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Mr. McIntosh. | |
| Well, two things. | ||
| As far as you said about the tariffs, some of it is being eaten by the companies themselves and the wholesalers. | ||
| So it's not the American people paying the whole thing. | ||
| Second of all, as far as the CR is concerned, yeah, you need 60 votes in the Senate in order to pass the continuing resolution. | ||
| And also, they don't want to end the filibuster on the CR because the party in power can add on all kinds of stuff onto the CR. | ||
| But why can't majority lead Assoon just say, we will eliminate the filibuster on clean CRs? | ||
| If it's a clean CR, you only need 51 votes. | ||
| I don't understand why they can't do that, and that would eliminate all this chaos. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Yeah, no, thank you for your call. | ||
| And it's appropriate you're from New York because one of the major factors going on behind this battle for shutdown or not shutdown is New York politics. | ||
| Senator Schumer is a more establishment, longtime member of the Democrat Party. | ||
| He's being challenged by the radical progressives, AOC Mandani, who's running for mayor of New York as a communist, basically, that he wants the government to take over the means of production. | ||
| That political pressure means that Senator Schumer, who traditionally would have said, I'll negotiate, get some things, and then we'll reopen the government. | ||
| He did that last spring, and he got basically almost figuratively tarred and feathered. | ||
| But people in his own party went after his head. | ||
| They wanted him removed because they're so radical in the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. | ||
| That puts pressure on folks here in the Democrat Party here in D.C. to not negotiate, hold out, refuse to vote to reopen the government. | ||
| As to the filibuster, I'm a big believer that the filibuster is a good thing, even when it works against you. | ||
| It's working against us now. | ||
| The Democrats are holding out and saying, we're not going to give you the 7, 8, 9 votes you need to get to 60 votes. | ||
| But typically, it's the conservative minority that benefits from the filibuster because you have to persuade both conservatives and liberals to move forward in the Senate. | ||
| And so I'm a proponent of keeping it, even when at this point it's frustrating for us. | ||
| You spoke about pressure. | ||
| It was Punch Bowl and you saying that the possibility is there that Senate Democrats eyeing that November 1st deadline on subsidies as a shutdown off-ramp, saying that Democrats think they can argue it's no longer feasible to address the expiring ACA subsidies legislatively and then make the Republicans own the resulting premium hikes. | ||
| Well, that's an interesting strategy on their part, especially since Senator Thune saying I'm willing to sit down and negotiate with you on changes to the health care system. | ||
| I think what the Democrats are doing is looking for an exit ramp from this. | ||
| The polls show they're being held responsible by the American people for not reopening the government, despite what Minority Leader Jeffries says. | ||
| They don't believe them, that it's the Republicans, because the Republicans keep bringing the bill forward to reopen the government. | ||
| And so maybe that November 1 exit ramp would be something they take advantage of. | ||
| Maybe it's the New York election when once the political pressure gets off of Chuck Schumer a little bit, he can sit down and say, okay, we'll reopen it and then let's deal with Obamacare. | ||
| Some of the Republicans said it was the end of the No Kings rally, possibly that could take pressure off them too. | ||
| I guess that's true too. | ||
| It's interesting because, again, their far-left radical elements show up at these rallies and say ridiculous things like ICE agents should be shot. | ||
| You've got these radical elements that are advocating violence when they don't get their way politically because they lost the election back in 2024. | ||
| Average Americans look at that and say, that's way out of bounds. | ||
| Let's hear from Jen. | ||
| Jen is in Pennsylvania for our guest, Dave McIntosh. | ||
| Democrats lying. | ||
| Jen, hello there. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to say I've worked in health insurance for over 30 years. | ||
| And I remember before Obamacare or APA how hard it was for individuals to get insurance on their own. | ||
| It was only really through groups. | ||
| They had to go through underwriting. | ||
| It was very expensive. | ||
| What people need to understand, though the government is subsidizing insurance, members are also paying abortion. | ||
| I think people don't really think about that part. | ||
| Taking that subsidy away will cause people to drop their insurance, which is, if there's an emergency, they're going to end up with Medicaid and we're going to end up paying for it anyway. | ||
| I believe it's irresponsible of the government not to get together to discuss the continuation. | ||
| About time to come up with another solution. | ||
| I don't need any of the benefits. | ||
| I pay my taxes. | ||
| I don't need Medicaid. | ||
| I don't need food stamps. | ||
| But I believe everyone needs help at some point in their lives, and I just can't turn my back on them. | ||
| Mr. McIntosh, do you have an idea of what we can do to help people that want to have affordable health care? | ||
| I do think we need to create affordable health care in the country. | ||
| One of the things that happened, though, was in COVID, they increased these subsidies so that half the people involved on the government-provided health care, Medicaid, don't pay any premiums at all. | ||
| And my view is, in order to have skin in the game, everybody should pay, even if it's $1, $5, some amount, to do that. | ||
| It sounds like, Jen, you do pay that, and that seems fair. | ||
| What we're worried about, though, is extending these subsidies that came out in COVID when people lost their jobs, the economy was shut down, they didn't have income coming in. | ||
| And so, as a temporary measure, they added about $1.5 trillion of subsidies that we don't need anymore. | ||
| When it comes to, oh, do you have a follow-up, Caller? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just was saying, it's still very expensive, even without those subsidies. | |
| If people are willing to pay their portion, I agree with that. | ||
| They're willing. | ||
| They're not getting it for free. | ||
| Thank you, Caller. | ||
| Do you want to follow up on that? | ||
| I'll set. | ||
| When it comes to health care, is it your mindset that government-provided health care should just be for catastrophic services, or should it extend further than that for regular visits and upkeep and such-and-such? | ||
| Or is there a slippery slope there if you go that way? | ||
| Yeah, so one of the things that has happened in Obamacare is the expansion of Medicaid. | ||
| Originally, when Medicare and Medicaid were put into place, Medicare was for senior citizens who were no longer working and would make sure that they paid taxes, contributed all of their lives, that they would be taken care of. |