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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from President Trump's nominees to serve in the Justice Department. | |
| Watch the hearing live at 10.15 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Wednesday, the three leading candidates in New York City's 2025 mayor's race, Democratic nominee Zorhan Mamdani, Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Slima, face off for a second time, answering questions from moderators as well as New York City voters. | ||
| Hosted by Spectrum News NY1, watch live at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And 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
|
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 in 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? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, 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
|
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 D.C. 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 what's happening in this country at the moment. | ||
| Kyle, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 the 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
|
Good morning, Vanjo. | |
| I just got a couple of questions that you asked him about. | ||
| One was tariffs. | ||
| Now, going back to American Little Illusion, 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 shift, the illegal aliens, it is on the books that they're 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 a build a bit of a filibuster. | ||
| It's simple. | ||
| And if they do that, they can pass the law. | ||
| They can open it. | ||
| Everything will open right up. | ||
| But they don't need a party once they cut, whoops, sorry, 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'll 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 a soon 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 and 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 a good core 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 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 one and a half trillion dollars 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. | ||
| Medicaid was for people who were disabled or out of work. | ||
| It wasn't meant to be a broad 40% of the population would be put onto that program. | ||
| By expanding it, what Obamacare did was essentially make privately provided health insurance unaffordable. | ||
| They added all these regulations. | ||
| They put requirements in there that people have to pay for premium insurance rather than just your basic catastrophic. | ||
| And as a result, they've crowded out the private insurance market and expanded to roughly 40, 45% of the population on what was meant to be a safety net in the Medicaid program. | ||
| So I think what we've got to do is go back and say, is this the best way for us to pay for this? | ||
| Now, the people who are really making the money in this, Pedro, are the insurance companies. | ||
| And I think one of the things they should do is look at the payments that are made to them under these programs and say, you're getting fat. | ||
| You're making too much money, not providing a great service. | ||
| We're going to cut you back. | ||
| Isn't that an anti-free market approach, though, if you go after a specific tangent? | ||
| Well, you can't call it free market when it's the government paying the bills, right? | ||
| So we've got to take care of the taxpayers, make sure their money is wisely spent. | ||
| You said that you take a look and follow elections. | ||
| Do things like shutdowns you think impact this election coming up next election next year? | ||
| To what degree do you think that happens? | ||
| Yeah, less next year because there'll be a lot of other issues that come up and go between now and then. | ||
| I actually think Republicans are doing remarkably well in a midterm setting. | ||
| Typically, you see the power, the party that is in power in the White House, lose ground, lose popularity. | ||
| President Trump's popularity is actually going up in all of this. | ||
| And Republicans are united. | ||
| They have set out a clear message. | ||
| We're going to reopen government. | ||
| Then we'll negotiate on what to do about these COVID subsidies. | ||
| Whereas the Democrats are split, right? | ||
| You've got You've got two Democrats running in New York for mayor, former Governor Cuomo and the new nominee Mandani. | ||
| And they're arguing what should our party stand for. | ||
| You get these protests where you've got really radical people coming and saying, we think ICE agents should be shot. | ||
| We so disagree with what's going on with them shutting down the border. | ||
| The American people are going to look at that and say over the next year, do we want to continue with Republicans with the progress they've made, the economy coming back, people going back to work, life being reopened, or do they want to go back to the where it was before 2024 or even way back to the first term where all the Democrats really did was spend their time trying to impeach Donald Trump. | ||
| And that doesn't move the country forward. | ||
| So I think the 26 elections are going to be which direction do we go forward from there. | ||
| Now, I do think you could typically see an impact on the off-year elections, if you call it that, Virginia, New Jersey. | ||
| But interestingly, what I've noticed is Republicans have actually been gaining in the polls here in Virginia, up in New Jersey as well, where it's become a close race. | ||
| It was Dave, the head of the DNC, Ken Martin, said this about the New Jersey race in a recent interview, saying New Jersey is the best place, excuse me, probably for Donald Trump to actually stop the Democratic momentum, or at least minimize the Democratic momentum that we've seen throughout this year. | ||
| What do you think about that statement coming from the head of the DNC? | ||
| I found that remarkable and truthful. | ||
| New Jersey is a very interesting case. | ||
| It's traditionally a very deep blue Democrat state, but you've also got a lot of working families who are Democrats who like what Trump's doing, bringing back the economy, bringing back jobs. | ||
| And you've seen there a series of fairly corrupt governors on the Democrat side with the Republican reformer coming on strong. | ||
| Last I saw, I was almost in the margin of error, I think about a four-point race. | ||
| Is that part of the effort that Clubber Grove will make specifically as the larger issues of races they'll look at this year? | ||
| I think what we'll do is take a look and analyze what happened in New Jersey and say how do we capitalize that on congressional races. | ||
| Our biggest priority is going to be keeping the majority in the House. | ||
| I think the Senate is in pretty good shape. | ||
| There'll be some three or four or five races there. | ||
| But the House is going to be the battleground for which direction the country goes in. | ||
| We formed a new fund. | ||
| We call it quite simply the House Fund out of our super PAC. | ||
| And my goal is to raise $40 million to bring to those races, help good people get elected. | ||
| As it stands today, what's the future of the House, do you think? | ||
| I would say better than 50% odds that the Republicans keep the majority, which cuts against history. | ||
| Now, Pedro, when I was in Congress, there was one midterm election where President Clinton's party actually gained seats, and that was in 1998. | ||
| And what was happening is Republicans were starting to talk about impeaching President Clinton. | ||
| And the president went to his base all over the country and said, send Democrats to Congress because the Republicans are out to get me. | ||
| I think the Democrat Party right now, because they don't have any other issue than they hate Donald Trump, are setting up the same type of scenario where President Trump can go to the American people and say, you elected me, I'm doing good things, you see it every day. | ||
| They're going to try to stop me, try to impeach me. | ||
| I need you to come out and vote once again. | ||
| Because the important factor in midterms is the turnout falls way off. | ||
| And typically, it's the party in power. | ||
| They think we got our guy there in the White House. | ||
| We don't have to go out and vote now. | ||
| And I think President Trump will be able to motivate them to come out and vote. | ||
| Let's hear from Vincent. | ||
| Vincent's in Pennsylvania, Independent Line for Dave McIntosh. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My main question was, in general, the government shut down and the voting on this bill seems like a moot point if the president and the executive branch can just choose not to spend any of that money if they choose to do so. | ||
| This seems like an existential crisis in the balance of power for the American government. | ||
| Your thoughts? | ||
| I think you've got a really good point there. | ||
| And President Trump is saying, okay, the government shut down. | ||
| We're not authorized to spend money. | ||
| I will keep spending on important essential parts of the government, like the military, like people's social security checks, and that. | ||
| But anything that's discretionary, and he happened to pick a lot of the big giveaway boondoggle spending programs on Green New Deal and other things and say, well, Congress hasn't authorized that we spend it. | ||
| I'm not going to spend it. | ||
| Your point is a really valid one that by failing to do its duty, Congress and specifically the U.S. Senate have shifted power from Congress to the executive branch. | ||
| And what they need to do is step up to the plate and claim that power back. | ||
| We're going to pass a spending bill, keep the government open, and then we'll negotiate and have a different debate and difference on the priorities, what we should spend the money on. | ||
| Here is Mark. | ||
| Mark and Maryland, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Mr. McIntosh, I want to thank you for focusing earlier on our deficit spending and a national debt. | ||
| I think that's the thing we have to really keep our eyes on, you know, aside from some of the issues like the ACA or Medicare and such. | ||
| You know, our debt right now is like $36 trillion, I think it is. | ||
| And if you divide that by our U.S. population, every man, woman, and child, it's like each person's share of that debt is over $100,000. | ||
| You know, about $106,000. | ||
| You know, so I'd like to propose everybody pull out your checkbook today and let's just clear the slate today. | ||
| And we'll write a check to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $106,000. | ||
| If you're married, you have a wife and two kids. | ||
| Your share is $430,000. | ||
| So let's do that today. | ||
| And I think everyone out there would say, Mark, you're being outrageous. | ||
| You know, what's outrageous really is the idea of taking that debt and adding another trillion and a half to it. | ||
| You know, and Democrats will say, oh, you're just not compassionate. | ||
| And I'd like to have a Democrat call in and tell me, what's compassionate about taking that crushing debt and passing that on to your kids and your grandkids? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mark. | ||
| And you're absolutely right. | ||
| It is that debt crisis that even with the budgets that the Republicans passed last year continues to spend more than we actually bring in in revenue in all the income tax, all the tariffs, all of the revenue to the federal government. | ||
| And we're now getting to the point, as you point out, 36 trillion plus added to it every day. | ||
| Not only your point, that a family of four owes essentially $400,000. if they were to pay it down. | ||
| That's like having a second mortgage with a no-home to back it up. | ||
| Or if you're renting an apartment, having to pay a mortgage and pay rent. | ||
| That's what we're putting for the future, especially younger voters should be very concerned about this because they're the ones over their lifetime who are going to be asked to repay a lot of that debt. | ||
| There's also another reason that I think it's critical that we put an end to the deficit spending and start managing that debt. | ||
| One, it creates inflation. | ||
| We're seeing that it's down now compared to where it was in the Biden years, but we're still seeing inflation greater than 2%, which is what the Federal Reserve projects. | ||
| They would like to see the normal level. | ||
| But we're also seeing other countries say, we're not going to buy your debt anymore. | ||
| You know, China has been reducing the amount of debt they hold. | ||
| They own a lot of our debt, which I think is also dangerous. | ||
| You've got China being the bank to the U.S. and yet being our rival for the economy and militarily. | ||
| And so it puts us in a vulnerable situation. | ||
| Right now, we've been able, since World War II, to be the dollar is all around the world, the currency the world uses and bases its economy on. | ||
| Other countries are now saying, hey, they can't get their house in order. | ||
| Maybe we shouldn't buy their debt anymore. | ||
| That's dangerous and precarious for us. | ||
| A couple of questions about topics we've addressed earlier. | ||
| This is from X. | ||
| A viewer says, Mr. McIntosh, do you think a more nuanced approach with regard to tariffs being placed on competitive goods instead of broad tariff application could alleviate some of the new trade war retaliatory measures by other countries? | ||
| I think the danger of tariffs, of having high tariffs, is exactly that, that other countries will retaliate. | ||
| We saw that in the Great Depression. | ||
| People don't have that in living memories, but history tells us when the U.S. put in massive tariffs, Europe, the rest of the world put in retaliatory tariffs, and the whole world economy shrunk and we went through a dark, dark time. | ||
| So it can be very dangerous as you get higher. | ||
| I've heard some innovative, nuanced approach towards tariffs where instead of tariffs on just the finished goods and the raw materials, you let companies that bring in the raw materials and then finish them. | ||
| So for example, furniture manufacturers might have to bring in the wood and other parts of it. | ||
| And then we add the value of finishing the product here. | ||
| Maybe we shouldn't pay tariffs on the inputs, but just tariff the end products. | ||
| And on immigration, a regular viewer who puts on X, why are employers not held accountable for illegally hiring undocumented immigrants? | ||
| That is a great question. | ||
| And I think it's been illegal for employers to hire them without, and they're required to check the papers to make sure they have legal status here. | ||
| Violated all the time. | ||
| And if the government started enforcing that rule, I think you'd see, instead of ICE agents having to go and find people and deport them, I think you would see a lot of people decide, oh, I don't have a job here in the U.S. anymore. | ||
| I'm going to head home. | ||
| And the ICE agent effort, what do you think overall of the effort by the administration on that? | ||
| I think they're doing a great job. | ||
| I mean, I have a great deal of respect for these ICE agents. | ||
| They're law enforcement agents. | ||
| They're risking their lives. | ||
| They're enforcing the law. | ||
| Was not done for four years under Biden. | ||
| They're doing it. | ||
| They're doing their job. | ||
| And I really think it's a terrible response for these protesters to be calling on them to be shot, to going up in their face. | ||
| They're doing their job. | ||
| Let them do their job. | ||
| Let's hear from Illinois. | ||
| This is our Allied for Democrats, Joshua. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Representative McIntosh. | |
| I just can't help but call in because I feel like you're not telling the whole truth about the IEPA tariffs. | ||
| These are unlawful tariffs. | ||
| They were implied, use the act says that they're for unusual and extraordinary threats. | ||
| When I, as a customs broker, that's what I do by trade. | ||
| I pay duties on behalf of American businesses. | ||
| And when I hear you not tell the truth, that there's a supposed emergency and you're abdicating your powers to the president here to impose tariffs. | ||
| There is no emergency with Canada. | ||
| Like, let's just say Canada, that thunder's coming over there. | ||
| But you allowed the president to impose these tariffs under the skies of an emergency. | ||
| And then later on, he ends up using his own powers because you already did that to impose tariffs in Brazil. | ||
| So at what point do you call back your power and actually start acting like a Congress? | ||
| Because what it is, communists, is letting one person take over multiple branches of the government. | ||
| You know, the Constitution doesn't give power to the president to do tariffs. | ||
| So the trade court already ruled on that. | ||
| And lastly, at these parades, nobody was calling. | ||
| I was at a No Kings Rallies. | ||
| Nobody was calling for shooting ICE agents. | ||
| What we're arguing about is No Kings. | ||
| Like, if you're able to give emergency powers to him over trade, what does it say that you're not going to declare an emergency in Chicago and let National Guard and then call on martial law or the Insurrection Act? | ||
| You guys are giving emergency powers to the president like it's nothing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Got your points. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One of the things that's happened is you've seen the rise of these lawless prosecutors in a lot of the cities where they say we're not going to enforce the state and local laws against theft, against shoplifting. | ||
| And you see basically allowing the streets to become unsafe in those cities. | ||
| What the president's responding to is the desire for Americans to have safe streets, to have the laws enforced. | ||
| It would be way better if these local prosecutors would do their job and actually put people in jail who've committed those crimes. | ||
| But out of necessity, the president's saying, I'm not going to let our cities decay to fall into chaos, become Gotham. | ||
| We're going to help them with that in a temporary way. | ||
| I think the American people are on his side. | ||
| The polls show they support his effort to fight crime in that way. | ||
| And honestly, I don't understand our friends in the Democrat Party who end up supporting that type of we're not going to enforce the criminal laws and allow our streets to become unsafe, dangerous shootings. | ||
| And we saw it here in Washington, D.C. As soon as they brought the National Guard in, the crime rate started going way down. | ||
| There were less murders, less violent crime. | ||
| People felt safe on the streets. | ||
| I think all American cities are entitled to that. | ||
| One more call, and this will be from Kathy, Kathy in Florida, Republican line. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| God bless America. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| First off, thank you so much for the work that you're doing. | ||
| I'm a big fan of respecting all the presidents in the United States. | ||
| There's never anything disrespectful to say about any of them. | ||
| That's my civility and morality for a family. | ||
| Coming to a specific issue, like the 988, one of the telephone numbers that we have in our city carrying state nationwide for those who are suicidal, mental, emotional, they finally opened it up for everyone, meaning that you didn't have to be, everyone in the LGBTQ was getting first come, first serve, and everyone else who was not an LGBTQ plus was not. | ||
| And they finally merged. | ||
| Why am I using that as an example? | ||
| When they took the flag down over the U.S., that part, they are upset. | ||
| There's nothing you can say or do to let them come to the table because that flag is down. | ||
| All I'm saying is rainbows is for everyone. | ||
| It has nothing to do with sexual orientation. | ||
| It's going to help us heal. | ||
| Oregon has opened for all drugs to be in their community. | ||
| The schools and the hospitals that have been saturated with either non-smoking or LGBT, we are all one. | ||
| We want to help everyone. | ||
| What is your take? | ||
| Because those in the middle institutions and in the prisons are getting medical help. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thanks, Kathy. | ||
| Thank you, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| You put a lot out there. | ||
| Yes, you did. | ||
| You know, I think what we're seeing in Florida and states like that is the American dream coming back. | ||
| And you look at some of the policies that brought that out, lower taxes, school choice in the educational system, that creates an environment. | ||
| And when you travel around, you notice in states like Florida and Texas, people are happier. |