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Dec. 28, 2017 - The Dan Bongino Show
46:06
Ep. 621 Government Predictions Gone Horribly Wrong

Media credibility is collapsing. Here are the hard numbers. The media’s negative coverage of Trump is getting worse. Here’s how the tax plan is going to impact the middle class. It’s unbelievable what some federal employees are making compared to the rest of us. Trump’s court appointments have been stellar. Here are the numbers.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hangin' in there, DB.
Sorry about the delay, folks.
We had about a five-minute delay.
We had a major technical malfunction, but when you're dealing with as much equipment as we are, eventually, someday, something goes wrong.
But luckily, we're okay now, so let's get right to it.
Hey, by the way, I am Unbelievably sore right now.
I just want to put that out there.
For those of you who've been tracking my progress on my stem cell injection, I took eight weeks off from lifting heavy, and I just got back to lifting yesterday.
I wouldn't call it heavy.
I would call it lifting.
It was actually pretty pathetic.
Some of the 12-year-olds in the gym were like, dude, you need a spot on that?
It was bad, but I got to moving some weights around yesterday, finally, and I am so unbelievably sore today.
It's incredible.
I can barely move my wings, so I'm hurting a little bit, but my brain is good and crisp for the show.
So, I read a piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal, which is fascinating.
I wanted to just quickly hit on this net neutrality thing again, because A lot of people are confused about it.
There's just a really good piece in the Journal today that shows you how confused most of the confused people are about net neutrality.
There's an article today that lays out this war going on right now, Joe, between Google and OTAs.
You know what OTAs are?
Well, when I was in the Secret Service, they were other Treasury agents.
You know, sometimes if we had a lot of details in town for the UN, protective details, we would ask the ATF and Customs to give us their agents.
So we'd say, hey, bring in some of the OTAs, right?
That is not what Google's at war with in this case.
OTAs are online travel agencies.
And the core of the story, the essence of it is this, that Google is now taking over the online travel market and it's really starting to hurt some of these smaller online travel agencies and some of these hotels because what's happening is some of these travel agencies are They're buying up search terms like, as they point out in the article, like Houston Hilton, right?
Which is in turn taking away business from Houston Hilton because some of these bigger online travel agencies are bidding up the price and some of the smaller ones can't.
All of the details of it, although interesting, are irrelevant to the point of the story.
The point is Google is making you pay, basically, to get on the front page of their search, which is unsurprising to no one.
I mean, you can pay sponsored ads to get on the first page of a Google search.
So if someone wanted to buy up the Dan Bongino show, like me, and put it on the first page of search, which it would probably wind up anyway, obviously.
But if you were a smaller show, let's say you had a podcast called You know, the online laboratory show where you talk about online laboratory results.
You're like, what?
I'm just thinking because I have laboratory results next to me.
I'm pretty healthy, by the way, folks.
You can pay to get that on the sponsored ad on the front page.
Why am I bringing up any of this?
Because one of the things at... I wake up every morning again committed to debunking liberal nonsense.
One of the things liberals will tell you in defending so-called net neutrality is, folks, a bit should be a bit should be a bit.
Everybody should have equal access.
Joe, it's about equality.
It's about equality, Joe.
Did you know that?
It's about equality, Dan.
It's always about equality for everything.
Now, You heard what I just told you, right?
Now, this battle has been against internet service providers, you know, the evil, like, Comcasts of the world.
I'm saying that sarcastically because you're like, oh, they'll slow down your traffic if you don't pay for a fast lane.
But did you notice, Joe, nobody seems to have any problem whatsoever With search engines or content providers like Facebook and Twitter and other ones allowing people to pay to get their traffic in front of you first.
Nobody has any problem with that.
Amazing.
So Joe, it's incredible, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
Yes!
It's just phenomenal how this happens.
The reason is, of course, because liberals want control of the internet by switching it from Title 1 to Title 2 so the government, under net neutrality, which is really a farcical term, under Title 2 can regulate the internet because liberals want the government to control everything and they'd like the government to control the internet traffic flow to your house.
Having got all that out of the way, net neutrality is just a vehicle for them to do that.
Because who is really controlling the quality and the quantity of the information that goes to your house are the content providers, not the ISPs!
So I'm just asking you in the audience, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I found this article fascinating.
There's like 10 other stories I have to get to today.
But it just, again, speaks to the intellectual vacuum liberals live in, that they go after.
Comcast and all these other companies, the internet service providers, under the illusion that they're somehow slowing down internet traffic to your house, and a bit isn't a bit.
In other words, a piece of information isn't treated equally on the internet.
Meanwhile, content providers like Facebook, with sponsored ads, Facebook with your timeline feed, as we talked about, Joe, remember a couple weeks ago?
How an overwhelming majority of Americans are getting their news from Facebook and Twitter.
They're controlling the traffic!
You're worried about the ISPs?
Are you kidding me?
There's a war going on right now with Google because hotels can't even get their own business on the front page of Google and you're worried about the ISPs?
Gosh, I mean, seriously, like, are you guys delirious?
Now, to be clear on what I'm suggesting, I'm not suggesting the government should have a role in that either.
Google's a private business and it's free to do what it wants.
I have no beef with Google.
I have no beef with Facebook.
I have no beef with Twitter.
I wish they were a little more centrist and not left-leaning.
I totally get that.
But I'm not suggesting to you the government has an answer here.
You have a beef with Google?
Then become the next Sergey Brin and Larry Page and start up a competitor.
Go invest in Bing or whatever, Yahoo or whatever.
Start up your own thing.
Yahoo backwards.
Ooh, hey.
Start it up.
I mean, really, what's stopping you?
Oh, I don't feel like doing that.
Well, Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn't have a ton of money to start it either.
Go start up a competitor.
Stop whining.
Stop whining all the time about everything.
All the time.
Will you please stop complaining?
Gosh, everything.
The rich, the internet, the ISPs, the teachers, the teachers, you, everything.
Just stop whining.
Stop with the Republicans, the Conservatives, Reagan, this guy, the Laffer Curve, just shh!
My gosh, are you annoying, liberals.
I'm sorry, for me to start the show off, and especially Christmas week, you know.
A semi-rant here, but it's really irritating.
I'm reading this story this morning, and that's what's going through my head.
ISPs, yeah, that's the problem.
Comcast, that's the problem.
Meanwhile, Facebook, Twitter, and Google alone are controlling probably 90% of what you see, and you're worried about a fictitious problem at your internet box on the last mile of traffic with someone slowing down the internet traffic to your house, but you couldn't care any less about everyone else.
Because you're phonies!
And Joe, you know why?
I should explain the why, because sometimes I don't do that.
You know, I got an email this morning.
This is not a look-squirrel moment, folks.
This is intentional.
But I got an email this morning and someone said, I need to let you answer questions more.
But you know what?
The problem is, folks, to be fair to Joe, Joe's doing a lot of stuff back there.
He's got the soundboard going.
It's not like Joe is just... Joe's not like some clown in the background.
He's a producer.
Joe was actually never intended to be part of the show.
I just found him so funny that it became his second banana roll by default.
Right?
That was never the intention.
This is the Dan Mangino show.
Right.
It's not the Armacost show, but it's become such because I find Joe very amusing to talk to on the show, but that's not what he does.
So that's why I don't bother him with questions.
But I'm going to ask you a serious question.
It's not a setup here.
Okay.
I'd like your opinion on it because I want to see what... I know usually you're like the ombudsman for the audience.
Why would you think liberals, if they were interested in passing something and making a political point, why do you think they would find Comcast a more convenient target than Facebook?
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Just to have somebody to blame it on, the big rich companies and corporations.
Right, right, but, don't, Joe, yes, you're right, of course, it's always the big, but here's the real reason, in my humble opinion, you're right, you're not wrong.
No, that's cool, that was my answer.
Okay, yeah.
Comcast, and that's what I think a lot of people think, but there's a real reason here.
Companies like Comcast, the cable companies, wouldn't you agree have a negative kind of customer service-y tone to it?
Like, oh, Comcast, oh my gosh.
Meanwhile, Comcast has been fine to me down here.
I've had problems in the past, but right?
Everybody hates the cable company, right?
But who hates Facebook?
I mean, really, there's some complaints here and there about political bias.
I get it.
But really, everybody uses it.
Nobody has any huge complaints with it.
I mean, I have a complaint with it.
They let impersonator pages go on.
There's some guy out there who's impersonating me, and Facebook couldn't care any less, by the way.
Which, you know, after a while, you're like, what are you going to do, right?
What are you going to do?
But Facebook and Twitter are not popular targets.
They're not easy bullseyes.
You get what I'm saying?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
No one wants to throw like darts at the butt of Facebook and Twitter because they're like cool techie companies.
But Comcast, oh man, we got to get them.
Folks, do you understand that's the only reason they pick them?
That's the only reason they picked them as a vehicle to government control over the internet.
The only reason.
You'll say, well, it was a way to regulate last mile providers and their titles.
No, no, that was never the goal, folks.
The goal was control of the internet.
That was always the goal.
Always.
The last mile thing and ISPs and Comcast, that was just a vehicle to get control over the internet.
If they could have done it through Google and Facebook because they were easier targets, they would have.
Don't be a sucker.
I'm serious.
Don't be a sucker for these folks.
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It was kind of an odd place for an office, right?
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All right, this show I've been dying to do for a while.
I just had to get that net neutrality thing out of the way, but I've been itching to talk about this for a while because I was filling in for Mark Levin.
The other day.
Was it last week?
And a guy called... I'll be back, by the way, tomorrow on Friday, in for Mark.
And a young man, very nice guy, but very confused show, called in about the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, saying, oh, the CBO is saying these tax cuts are going to cost us one... cost us, by the way.
Tax cuts are going to cost the government something.
That's comical in and of itself.
But the CBO is saying it's going to increase the deficit by 1.5 trillion.
So I said to him and I asked a very simple question.
Some of you may have heard it.
I said, Mr. Caller, what are you basing these predictions on?
In other words, this is an entity that predicts the future, right?
CBO.
Amazing, Joe.
They predict the future.
Isn't that incredible?
I said, what's their record of success?
And he didn't know, so I informed him about their record of success, how it was a 100% record of failure, how they've never successfully predicted anything.
And his comments were really telling, because it goes to show you the extent to far leftists will go to make their talking points sound real, even when they're entirely farcical.
He's like, well, well, I trust them anyway.
I'm like, well, why would you trust them?
You know, again, if I was asking a guy for betting tips, because I was in Las Vegas, and I was betting on a horse or something, and he was a supposed horse expert, and I said, well, what's your record of predicting the horse races?
And he goes, zero for a hundred.
Well, are you going to put your money on that guy?
The answer is no, you're going to put your money on the opposite of what that guy says.
If he says, you know, bet on horse Joey Bagadonatz, you're betting on Joey Bagadonatz's competitor, because you know this guy's zero for a hundred, and he's just not going to win.
So, I did some homework this morning for you because I enjoy doing this and it's fun.
We're going to call CBO Phil.
Hey, Joe, by the way, do you have that fake news thing?
Yes, I do, Dan.
Somebody emailed us, and this is kind of like the CBO fake news story.
So although it's not entirely fake news, like the Melania Trump was going to mow down a 200-year-old tree on the White House grounds.
I don't know if you saw this story.
Someone suggested we do like an air siren.
So Joe put this little thing together.
Play that cut.
This is a fake news alert.
The story you're about to hear is inaccurate, bogus, or just a bunch of crap.
This is a fake news alert.
Nice job by Joe Arbuckle.
That was a great idea.
The listener sent that in.
He said, so this is kind of a fake news alert about the CBO sounding the alarm, pun intended, that the debt is going to increase by 1.5 trillion.
We'll call this Epic CBO Fails.
So on the Affordable Care Act, Joe, in 2010, the CBO predicted... Hey, babe, you want to come in and say hello?
My young daughter's home from school.
You want to come in and say hello, Mimi?
Come here.
Come and say hello.
So, you want to say hello to the audience?
Come on over here.
Here, say hello, babe.
Hello.
Say, my name's Amelia.
My name's Amelia.
And what'd you get for Christmas?
I got a Barbie camper and Calico critters.
Thanks, babe.
Give me a pico.
I love my daughter.
Sorry, folks.
Didn't mean to interrupt the show, but she's home from school and she's creeping around my office.
I can see she wants to come in and say hello.
She got a Barbie camper and calico critters in case you need me to translate Bongino for you.
So, the ACA, the CBO predicted in 2010, Joe, how many people would be in the exchanges?
Log these numbers in your melon there.
21 million!
21 million, Dan.
21 million, Dan.
21 million.
We've got that number logged in our heads.
This is terrific.
21 million.
You know, Joe, to be fair, in 2010 they predicted 21 million.
You know, even statistical analysis sound ones are off by, you know, 5, 10 percent.
So you figure, if they were between, they predicted 21 million, if they were between 18 and 24 million, it was a pretty good prediction, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, I'd say so.
I mean, plus or minus 5 percent, 10 percent, roughly.
By 2017, the number was...
$10 million in the exchanges, so you can slice that number in half.
$21 million, $10 million.
Now, I don't have a ditto cam like Rush in the studio, but let me do the hand mechanics for you.
One hand goes high, the right hand, $21 million.
One hand goes low, about halfway between the table and my hand.
$21 million, $10 million.
They weren't even close, folks.
They weren't even in the ballpark.
They weren't even in the parking lot of the ballpark.
They weren't even in the county or the state the ballpark is actually in.
That's kind of a big miss, Joe.
Yeah.
That's kind of like the guy threw a knuckleball, you swung it at head level, and the thing was bouncing on the ground five feet from his hands.
I mean, you just missed this thing.
The ball didn't even make it to home plate, and you were swinging.
That's kind of a big miss.
Oh, we're not done.
Folks, again, I'm not trying to discredit people personally.
I'm sure the CBO is full of wonderful human beings.
I'm just telling you as an institution, it has been an absolute, epic, colossal, catastrophic, apocalyptic failure.
Still on the ACA.
They predicted these risk corridor payments, which were, you know, surplus, I'm using the government terminology here, surplus payments made from insurance companies that were supposed to make a lot of money, Joe.
They were supposed, remember this?
They were supposed to give money to the government that was going to be used to offset companies that were losing money.
They predicted, this is a doozy, that these risk corridor payments would result in a net $8 billion in positive payments to the government.
Wow, man!
Some prediction.
You guys are great, CBO.
What did it actually result in in 2015?
Just years later, by the way.
It resulted in a $5.8 billion deficit.
So we're looking at about a $13 billion swing.
They were off by a little bit, Joe.
A little bit.
It was a little bit.
This reminds me of Goodfellas, where, you know, what is it?
The guy who gets out of jail.
What is it?
Billy Batson.
He says, go get your shoe box.
And Robert De Niro's like, what?
I didn't do anything wrong.
And De Niro says to him, to Billy, he goes, you offend them a little bit.
A little bit.
You know, just a little bit.
They're off by a little bit there.
Predicted $8 billion.
It lost $5.8 billion.
You were off by a little there.
About $13 billion in a swing.
Nice work there, guys.
On Medicare, excuse me, on Medicaid enrollees.
Remember that Obamacare expanded Medicaid enrollees.
The CBO, 50% more people enrolled in Medicaid than the CBO predicted.
A little bit, Joe, a little bit.
They were off by 5% times 10.
50% more people enrolled in Medicaid.
That's a nice job.
Good job by the CBO.
You're right.
We should absolutely put our faith in them.
You may say, all right, well, come on, Dan, you're just picking on Obamacare, which naturally just stinks, and that's an easy target.
You're right, it is, because it was such a disaster.
But let's go back to some other ones.
Let's go back to some predictions they made.
This is Joe.
This one is a doozy.
This is the coup de grace of predictions.
In 2002, the CBO predicted a 10-year budget window, right Joe?
They predicted in 2002, and I want you to follow this because this is clear evidence of I mean, failure's so epic, it's laughable.
They predicted by 2012, so 10 years after the prediction, that the national debt would be 7.4% of GDP.
Okay?
Not 74, folks.
74% of GDP right okay, not 74 folks 7.4. I'm not getting their numbers wrong
7.4.
2002 they predicted in 2012 it would be 7.4 percent of GDP P.
What was the actual number?
The actual number was 74.
Well, to be precise, 73.
So move the decimal point over by one, basically times it by 10, and you get the actual number of what the national debt was.
So now, all of a sudden, the CBO would say, yeah, it'll be about 7.4%.
You mean 74?
No, we mean 7.4, because it's 74.
Oh, sorry, we screwed up!
Only by a factor of 10, no big deal.
Folks, why are you taking these people seriously?
Now, I'm not maligning them personally, I mean that.
Now, let me just be very specific as to why.
Because I'm not trying to dance around and be like the PC guy, you know, be nice and virtue signal.
There are good people that work there, but Joe, they're forced to work with the parameters you give them.
So if Congress and the Democrats specifically give them a set of parameters and say, don't go outside these parameters and assume this, then that's what they're going to assume and that's the dopey numbers they're going to give you, even if the assumptions are wrong.
Here's a great example.
I've used this, I haven't used this example in a long time, but for those long-time listeners, you've heard this before.
Understanding the difference between a valid measurement and a reliable measurement is kind of an essence of what's wrong with the CBO.
Garbage in is going to equal garbage out.
And here's what I mean by that.
You can have a scale, right?
A scale, like you weigh yourself on, you know, you step on it.
Remember this example, Joe?
You can have a scale that's reliable, but it's not valid.
Now how is that?
So let's say the scale is off by 20 pounds every time it adds 20 pounds, which for me would be great.
I'd be like, nice, I'm up to like 240.
This is solid.
You know, I'm always looking to gain weight, not lose it.
But you see where I'm going with this show?
If you have a scale that's off by 20 pounds every time, it's reliable.
It says Dan Bongino weighs 240 pounds.
But it's not valid.
I don't weigh 240 pounds.
I weigh 220 pounds.
But it's reliably off.
I don't know what Joe weighs.
200?
Joe's a pretty stacked guy.
You're about 6'1", right?
Yeah, about 210 at this point.
210?
Joe's pretty stacked, especially for a guy that's a little bit older than me.
So Joe would be 230, which he's not.
He's 210.
But it's reliable.
It's reliably wrong.
When you understand the difference between reliability and validity, you understand the problem with the CBO.
The CBO has been given a scale that's always 20 pounds off by using static rather than sound dynamic analysis.
In other words, when factoring in growth factors into the economy in a real traditional way based on historical analysis, they're given faulty assumptions.
You're always going to get faulty output.
It's not a mystery.
That's important.
It's critical you understand that.
And I know people who've studied statistics in college, that was probably a basic example and you already knew it, but some people haven't.
The CBO is reliable, Joe.
They're just not valid.
They are reliably wrong every single time.
So please, spare me the talk about how the CBO is predicting an apocalypse from this Trump tax cut.
I don't want to hear it.
They've been wrong every time.
I'm not interested.
If you were betting on the CBO's assumptions, you'd be broke right now.
All right.
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So, on a very serious note with BrickHouse, I was off the foundation for like three, four weeks, which was probably a bad idea.
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The creatine is good.
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All right.
On the topic of the tax cuts, and I get it, some of you may be tired of hearing about it, but it's important, folks.
It's important because the rhetoric's heating up already.
Our favorite, Joe and I, Alan Blinder, who always writes nonsensical pieces, this is Blinder, Blinder, I don't even know, who always writes these crazy Looney Tunes pieces in the Wall Street Journal, sums them all up magically, Joe, in one piece today in the Wall Street Journal, every tax cut myth about this tax cut plan.
I'm not going to beat it to death because you've heard him before on the show, but I just, because some of your liberal friends may read this and go, look, even the Wall Street Journal is talking about how bad this tax cut plan is.
First, Blender's like, these are a scam.
They're going to expire in 2025.
Oh, gosh, I can't.
Can this guy, Alan, you are a PhD, right?
I mean, listen, nothing personal, buddy, but I know people send you this podcast based on the listenership we have.
By the way, yesterday, did you see the numbers show?
They were like bonkers.
So we're going crazy.
We're going Looney Tunes with the numbers.
Someone must know Alan Blender.
He can't be this dumb.
He can't be this dumb to tout this they expire by 2025 thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've told you four or five times, maybe more, they expire because no Democrats voted for it.
So the only, that's the only reason.
If eight to 10 Democrats would have voted for it, they'd be permanent.
The Republicans wanted these things to be permanent.
The Democrats said, no, that's it.
That's the only story you need to hear.
They couldn't overcome a Democrat filibuster, so they had to pass it with 51 votes.
That's it!
It is no more complicated than that.
The only question you should ask Alan Blinder and your Democrat friends is, okay, you want them permanent?
Are you willing to introduce a bill tomorrow, in conjunction with Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate, to make them permanent?
That's it.
Only question, folks.
Ask your liberal friends that.
Are you willing to call your congressmen, liberals who listen to the show, and your senator tomorrow, and have them introduce a bill in January to make these tax cuts permanent?
I guarantee you, you would have absolutely unanimous Republican support.
Guaranteed.
Guaranteed.
You would get every Republican.
But you won't do it.
Because you're making it up.
So Blender leaves that part out, of course.
Oh, they're going to expire.
Number one.
Number two.
We don't need to beat this one up because he just talked about it.
He goes, well, they're going to add to the deficit.
And he's basing that on the CBO estimate, who I told you had been reliably wrong and not valid basically forever.
So we'll move on from that.
The deficit thing is nonsense.
Tax cuts have not led to decreased government revenues.
Blinder knows that.
He's just lying to you in the piece.
Then he talks about trickle-down.
Here we go, folks!
Trickle-down, despite the fact that most middle-class Americans are going to get a 56% tax cut, as reported in the Washington Examiner today.
Even some liberal outlets are starting to acknowledge that they're hysteria about the middle class losing under this deal.
We're all lies.
The middle class is actually going to do fine under this deal.
It is a myth.
And folks, there is no such thing as trickle-down.
I've said it on the show before.
If you don't believe me, Google the National Review piece by Thomas Sowell, the trickle-down myth.
There is no such thing as trickle-down.
It is a Democrat... Listen to me, because some of you get this wrong.
I get emails from Republicans.
They're angry at me, Joe.
They're like, what do you mean there's no such thing?
I'm attacking conservative economic principles.
I'm not.
You're reading this all wrong.
Trickle-down is not a theory.
It is a slur by Democrats.
Folks, you understand that?
That trickle-down economics was a focus group tested talking point used way before Reagan, by the way.
Most people think it started in the Reagan era.
That is not true.
Thomas Sowell has a long history of the term trickle-down.
Trickle-down started way before... it is a slur.
Liberals use against conservatives to make you believe something's going to rich people and it's supposed to... the imagery of it trickling down to the starving masses was used intentionally to make you feel like you're getting worked.
There's no such theory as trickle-down.
None!
It doesn't exist.
It's a myth.
Nobody can point to you the actual econometric theory of trickle-down, because there's no such thing!
So of course Blinder mentions Agile.
Trickle-down doesn't work.
Of course it doesn't work, because it doesn't exist!
Trickle-down, how can it work?
It doesn't exist!
It's like saying unicorns have a high propensity for hoof disease.
Uh, there are no unicorns.
That's like I said!
The hoof disease is out of control with unicorns!
What are you- Wait, what?
There's no such thing as unicorns!
There's no such thing!
Actually, the example would be even better!
Here's a- This is a- This is a more appropriate example.
Hoof disease is rare in unicorns.
You're like, it is?
Well, there's no such thing as unicorns.
That's why it's rare!
That's the perfect example.
But hoof disease in unicorns, yeah, I just never see it anymore.
Have you ever seen a unicorn?
No.
Do they exist?
No.
But that's why hoof disease is rare.
Trickle down can't work because there is no trickle down.
There's no such thing.
It's a stupid talking point.
Don't be a sucker for that.
Okay, he also repeats the, uh, oh, this one's a doozy.
He repeats that this was, this vote was taken on a partisan basis.
Not one Democrat voted for it.
This is classic.
Wait, let me get this straight.
You open up by telling us they're going to expire these tax cuts.
You don't mention that they were only going to expire because zero Democrats voted for it.
And then you're complaining that only Republicans voted for the bill later on.
Wait, we come again?
So you're whining that they're not permanent because your Democrats didn't support it.
Then you're whining later on the opposite thing that only Republicans voted for it.
Does this make any sense to this guy?
Now, what I find ironic is Blinder seemed to have no such complaints, or at least as loudly he didn't complain, that only Democrats voted for Obamacare.
None.
He only complains about tax cuts.
So when the government's going to take your money in the form of Obamacare and no Republicans vote for it, he's fine.
But the fact that no Democrats voted for this, he's loudly complaining while simultaneously complaining that because no Democrats voted for it, it's going to expire.
If you're pulling your hair out right now, you should be.
It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense.
Because it's a liberal who wrote this and they never make sense.
He complains in the piece that 13 million Americans are going to, quote, get thrown off or lose Obamacare coverage.
Folks, that's a myth we've debunked on this show repeatedly.
That is not the case.
The individual mandate, the tax penalty for you, if you do not have Obamacare, the tax penalty was repealed.
Because the tax penalty was repealed, the predictions are, which are going to be off by the way, are that 13 million Americans, now that they are not penalized by this garbage insurance at overinflated prices, 13 million are going to choose, choose, choose, choose, not lose Obamacare.
They are going to choose to exit the program.
Blinder leaves the choose word out because he knows it's uncomfortable, he knows it doesn't hammer home his point.
They don't want Obamacare!
Forcing them to get it is forcing 13 million people to buy a product they don't want.
When you take away the penalty, they don't want it anymore and they are going to run for the hills.
Thousands of Americans would die.
Of course, Bernie.
Of course they would.
Play that again, Joe.
Thousands of Americans would die.
Of course they will.
That is the natural result of 13 million Americans who don't want Obamacare, which they can't use anyway because their deductibles are through the roof.
Thousands of Americans.
Bernie, that's their response to everything, of course.
And I don't know if that clip was for that, but it very well may have been.
The funny thing is about Bernie saying that is, as I always say, you could apply that to anything with Bernie.
We don't really even know.
Joe, right?
I'm not kidding.
Someone sent that to us, or Joe polled it or something, and Democrats say people are going to die about so many things.
I am genuinely being serious.
I have no idea what that's about.
Tax cuts, school choice, Obamacare.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I really don't.
You know, ripping mattress tags off a mattress, thousands of Americans.
I have no idea.
That's just the Democrats talking.
So 13 million Americans will choose not to have Obamacare, but Blinder leaves that out.
All right.
Let's see.
Oh, great piece in the Daily Signal today, which will be available to show notes at Bongino.com.
Folks, please, I'm asking you post-holiday, if you can, up to you, obviously your choice, of course.
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I don't want to turn you off by, you know, selling you stuff.
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And I will email you these articles every day.
It's basically four or five articles that sums up the best conservative news stories I can find across the internet that day.
And I've got some good ones today from Legal Insurrection, Daily Signal, some really, really good stuff.
But here's what I saw at the Daily Signal, just to show you some of the progress that Trump has made on court appointments.
And folks, court appointments are critical.
Dan Horowitz has been all over this at Conservative Review, but as we've seen, the Democrats have fallen in love with the judicial state.
Now, I don't know if anyone else is using that term.
If they are, I will appropriately footnote it later.
But the judicial state, which Horowitz has been all over, is the explosion in federal and state judges overriding the will of the people through laws and the legislative process, governors and the president.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Constitution was written by the founders to provide three co-equal branches of government, not one branch of government to override the other three.
Now I know, I get it, most of you understand that in essence, but a lot of liberals, I'm serious Joe, really don't.
They really believe that the judicial process is a license to override the will of the people.
They've done it on social issues like gay marriage, over and over and over.
They believe that's not what the judicial branch was there to do.
That's not!
I mean, if you read Marbury v. Madison and, you know, some of the original founding Secret Service, Supreme Court cases, you'll see that this is not... The constitutionality of a law was not meant to override the constitutionality of the Constitution!
The legislative process makes the laws, not the bench.
I bring this up, folks, because appointing liberals to the bench has been a disaster.
Since FDR tried to stack the courts, We have had this explosion in far-left fake judges.
They're not real judges.
I mean, they're judges.
They're gynos.
Judges in name only.
They get on the bench and they have absolutely no intention of adhering to the Constitution.
They want to legislate from the bench.
The most important, I think, or maybe one of the most important things Trump has done, and God bless him for doing this, when he got in office, Joe, has been immediately seeking outside counsel on who some of the best, constructionist, conservative judges out there are, and appointing these people.
Now, here's the progress we've made so far.
There's good news and there's bad news.
I'll give you the bad news first.
Trump has only had 19 total appointments made to the bench.
This is a historic low.
George W. Bush had 28, Reagan had 41 at this point, by the way, for Joe, in the first year.
Carter had 31, and there were 167 vacancies either announced or pending.
That's a lot of judicial appointments at the federal level to only have 19 confirmed.
The good news He has had a record number of circuit court judges at the appellate court level here, where, Joe, an astonishing 50,000 cases are heard a year.
Now, just to put this in perspective for you, so I know this sounds weird.
You're like, well, he's had a record low number of judges appointed.
Yes, but what I'm trying to tell you is the ones he's had appointed, Joe, are at the most critical level you can do it, which is the circuit court judges.
They hear 50,000 cases a year.
The Supreme Court, Joe, here's just 70.
So the Supreme Court is critical, and the Neil Gorsuch appointment by Trump to the Supreme Court and the Senate confirmation process was excellent.
I know the Senate confirms him.
I get it.
Don't play word games with me.
I hate when people, liberals, email me specifically.
What?
You don't know the Senate confirms him?
No, I don't know.
Thanks for telling us.
Joe, do you know that?
No.
Yeah, I mean, the show's 45 minutes to an hour long, folks.
We don't have to walk through the Constitution every single time.
Liberals do that.
They like to catch you in word games.
But of those small level of overall appointments, they've been appointed in the most critical place, and that is those appellate courts where 50,000 cases are heard a year, in contrast to just 70 on the Supreme Court.
So that's the good news.
Now, in the new year, folks, not to get Hyperbolic or melodramatic with you, but this is how critical it's going to be to hold the Senate next year.
If the Democrats succeed in continuing to slow down this process, and what they're doing is they're demanding these cloture votes on every single judicial court and nominee they can get their hands on, which requires 30 hours of debate.
So what's happening is rather than just taking vote after vote after vote, which was traditionally done to confirm these people, what happened, Joe, is they're now demanding 30 hours of debate on every single one of them, which is grinding the process to a glacial pace, effectively almost a halt.
If we don't win the Senate, excuse me, retain the Senate, we have the Senate now, next year, and we lose the Senate in the 2018 midterms, we are going to be in big trouble.
You are not going to see another nominee appointed to the court.
I'm telling you right now, they will grind this process to an absolute halt.
So get out there, get active, and make sure you vote.
Enough on that.
I don't want to get preachy on that.
I vote every time.
All right, let's see.
Oh, this one.
Yeah, this one kind of hurts.
I got two more just quick ones.
I'm going to put this story up at the show notes today, too, because this is stunning.
And having worked for the federal government, I was kind of astonished by this one as well.
Joe, how many... That's kind of an unfair question, I want to ask you that.
I don't want to set you up, because I was so off on this, too.
I don't want to put you in a bad spot.
If I gave... This is serious, but I'll give you multiple choice.
How many federal government employees do you think make six-figure salaries or more?
I'll give you three numbers, right?
right? Yeah. 100,000? 205,000? 306,000? Or 406,000 federal employees? I'd say the 400 and some thousand.
100,000?
205,000?
306,000?
You would be right! Really?
You would be right!
Really?
406,960 federal employees are making six-figure salaries.
Folks, that's one in five.
You know what the average salary for an American employee is?
$44,000.
Now...
Having worked for the federal government, I want to be clear on this, and I want to give you a clear-eyed view of what's going on.
The constitutional roles of government, our military folks, I shouldn't say constitutional, respect the FBI, because the FBI isn't anywhere in the Constitution, but I think the roles we all agree should, you know, the law, federal law enforcement, our military, our court system, I have no problem, and I don't work for the Secret Service anymore.
My pension's gone.
I cashed it out.
I don't get anything from them.
I'm not their spokesperson.
But having worked there, I can tell you that the appropriate functioning... I know, Joe, you would agree with this, because we've spoken about this.
The appropriate functioning of our federal government requires that people obey the law, that people obey contract law, and that people basically don't try to assassinate the president.
You need good people in these roles.
You need good people in the FBI.
And I can tell you having worked there, especially in the regions most of them work, Washington D.C.
and New York, where the salaries are higher, just because the cost of living is higher.
That I don't have an issue with a senior level Secret Service agent with 15 years experience making $130,000 a year.
I know that may disappoint many of you, but I'm here to be honest.
I'm not going to lie to you.
I don't because I was there and I know what happens when they move to New York from Tuscaloosa and they find out that their $90,000 a year can't even rent them an apartment and they quit.
And we lose a guy, Joe, who's an agent who's a lawyer.
He's got an MBA.
I mean, I know one guy who has a CPA, an MBA, and a law degree.
This guy was one of the best agents around, and the entire Secret Service budget is just a billion dollars, which is nothing.
Same thing with the FBI.
I want really good, trained linguists, trained accountants, trained lawyers.
I want the best of the best.
That's my opinion.
You're free to feel otherwise.
But, Joe, on the other side of this, do we need 406,000 people making six figures?
What the heck are you doing?
I mean, seriously, what are you doing?
I mean, does a bureaucrat in HHS, who is basically administratively keeping control of some documents or some files, do they need to make 95,000 to 100,000 a year?
I mean, come on!
This is insane!
We're in the middle of the worst budget crisis in American history.
We got all these people making $100,000 a year.
The articles in the Daily Signal puts it in perspective.
One in five making a hundred grand a year.
Folks, I'm sorry, but that's just, that's insane.
That really, something needs to be done about that.
There needs to be some kind of control on some of these salaries.
I mean, the fact that a secret service agent putting his butt on the line every day is making the same amount as some upper level bureaucrat who has the equivalent job in the private sector of a $70,000 a year job is making $130,000.
It's just insane.
That's just wrong.
All right, one more quick story.
Illegal Insurrection has a piece up today, I'll put it in the show notes, about a Poynter survey.
This I was kind of shocked by too, it's why I wanted to discuss it last.
Poynter is some media group and they did a survey, Joe, about trust in the media and an astonishing nearly 44% of Americans think the media is just making it up.
Making it up!
Folks, on a very serious note, we need an independent, good, strong media.
We do.
I mean, listen, the way tyrants move forward and basically disguise their agenda is by a compliant media.
Now, we've seen that.
The media, unfortunately, is compliant to liberals and they make stuff up about Republicans.
So, this is a problem that needs to be solved.
But, you know, you want a reason why this is happening?
I have another article I'll put in the show notes today in the Washington Examiner.
Only 5% of the coverage of Donald Trump to this point of his presidency has been positive.
Now folks, come on.
I get it that the media dislikes the man, I get it they have a beef with the guy, but are you seriously telling me that only 5 out of 100 stories are worthy of at least some component of positive coverage?
You're just making it up at that point.
And that's why America's losing faith in you.
It should be a lesson to media folks, but it won't be.
I know how they are.
Joe, I'll be honest with you, I don't think they really care.
I think they are so committed to the liberal agenda that they'll throw their business model, their money, and their salaries out the window.
And that's what happens when media becomes a religion and not journalism.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
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