Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Heroic Thomas Massie
Aired: 2020-03-31
Duration: 36:12


=== Recorded Votes and Government Size (13:18) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:07]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:09]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:11]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:14]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:20]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:25]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:29]  Here's your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:34]  Hello, hello, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:35]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:39]  I am very excited for this episode.
[00:00:42]  It's a first for my show.
[00:00:44]  It's the first time I've ever had a sitting member of Congress on the show.
[00:00:48]  I have once had a former member of Congress on the show, and that was, of course, the great Ron Paul.
[00:00:54]  And so it makes sense that the guy I have on the show today is the member of Congress who is continuing, I think, in that legacy.
[00:01:04]  Of course, I'm talking about Representative Thomas Massey, who represents the fourth congressional district in Kentucky.
[00:01:11]  And now I can say in the history of all of the congressmen who I admire, I've had all of them.
[00:01:19]  Okay, so Congressman Massey, you have been at the center of a lot of controversy.
[00:01:26]  You've been pissing off the Democrats and the Republicans and the corporate press.
[00:01:31]  And I have a rule of thumb.
[00:01:33]  This is the Dave Smith rule of politics.
[00:01:36]  Okay.
[00:01:37]  If anything is done on a bipartisan basis, it's evil.
[00:01:41]  And if anyone is hated on a bipartisan basis, they're doing something courageous.
[00:01:47]  So by my rule, you are doing a very good job.
[00:01:51]  Tell me what happened with this insane $2 plus trillion dollar stimulus bill and what it was that you did that got everybody so angry at you.
[00:02:02]  George Carlin, you know, rest in peace, used to say that bipartisan is the word they use when a bigger than usual deception is being carried out.
[00:02:11]  So you and he see that eye to eye.
[00:02:14]  So what happened here?
[00:02:15]  Well, you know, the Senate passed this $2 trillion bill and I kept waiting to find out when we were going to vote on it.
[00:02:23]  We were told we'd get 24 hours notice.
[00:02:26]  And what I realized Tuesday night at midnight was that they were planning to have no vote.
[00:02:32]  They were just going to say, hey, it passed the House.
[00:02:35]  And they were going to do that by what's called unanimous consent.
[00:02:38]  Now, it's easy to get unanimous consent when nobody's in the chamber.
[00:02:42]  It's like, all in favor, you know, anybody object.
[00:02:46]  Anyways, so that's how they were going to pass it.
[00:02:49]  So I got in a car and drove through the night, slept for an hour at a rest stop, got back up and kept driving, got to DC, and they said, okay, well, yeah, that is, you know, we realize that's kind of shady.
[00:03:03]  So we'll have a voice vote, as if that's any better, right?
[00:03:09]  Because every bill passes by or fails on a voice vote.
[00:03:13]  And then typically what happens is somebody requests the recorded vote.
[00:03:17]  And they said, no, no, we're not going to have a recorded vote.
[00:03:20]  In fact, they were telling members of Congress to stay home.
[00:03:24]  We got this.
[00:03:25]  We got this under control.
[00:03:27]  $2 trillion, actually $6 trillion when you count all of it.
[00:03:31]  We're going to do the biggest spending bill in the history of mankind.
[00:03:34]  I call it the biggest wealth transfer in the history of mankind.
[00:03:38]  The bill, if you take $6 trillion of stimulus and divide it by 100 million families, you come up with $60,000 per family.
[00:03:47]  Now, the money they're proposing is a $1,200 check to each working adult and $500 for every child.
[00:03:54]  You know, you might qualify for $3,000 if you qualify.
[00:03:59]  But what's the problem here?
[00:04:01]  There's $60,000 that's going out, you know, in the name of the taxpayer, and only $3,000 is going to the taxpayer.
[00:04:08]  Where's that money going?
[00:04:09]  It's going to the money class.
[00:04:11]  It's going to the shareholders on Wall Street.
[00:04:13]  It's going to the bankers.
[00:04:15]  It's, I mean, that's where 95% of this money is going to go.
[00:04:20]  So I'm thinking, you know, we should be on record.
[00:04:23]  This is, you know, you've got one job in Congress, and that is to press the button and vote.
[00:04:30]  So what I did is I got there, I said, we should have a vote.
[00:04:34]  And they said, Massey, you'll delay the whole bill if you request a vote.
[00:04:39]  And I said, why is that?
[00:04:40]  They said, because we promised we'd give everybody 24 hours' notice if there's going to be an actual vote.
[00:04:46]  I said, well, it's Thursday and you're saying the votes on Friday.
[00:04:50]  If you would quit telling people to stay home right now and start telling them to come to Washington, D.C., there will be no delay.
[00:04:58]  And they were like, I guess you're right.
[00:05:01]  So they told people to come to Congress.
[00:05:03]  And of course, that's what made me one of the most hated men in Washington, D.C. When you make people work that generally don't like to work, who like to take their paychecks, they were, you know, every congressman receives $174,000 a year.
[00:05:19]  And if they opt to receive, they can receive this generous health care package.
[00:05:25]  Now, I don't receive it.
[00:05:27]  I still buy my own health care plan because I think it's hard to rail against Obamacare when the government's paying for your health care, right?
[00:05:35]  But most of the other congressmen don't have a problem with that.
[00:05:37]  So they've got the best, like I've got junk insurance, you know, supposedly, but now that's like the bronze plan in Obamacare.
[00:05:44]  But anyways, suffice it to say, their health care is paid for.
[00:05:48]  They're making good money.
[00:05:49]  And they don't want to come to work because they were telling me it could jeopardize their health.
[00:05:53]  Meanwhile, they're telling the truckers, stay on the road, bring us our food.
[00:05:58]  They're telling our farmers, get out there in the fields, grow our food.
[00:06:02]  They're telling the grocery baggers, bag our food and carry it to our car, if you would, please, right?
[00:06:08]  Load it in the car.
[00:06:10]  Yet, and that's all fine and good according to the congressman, but they don't want to have to go to work because I'm going to jeopardize their health by making them come to work.
[00:06:19]  By the way, I said, and I first said this on Twitter, that the Constitution requires a quorum.
[00:06:26]  And a quorum is half of the members, so the sitting members.
[00:06:29]  Right now we're a little shy of 435, so half is 216.
[00:06:34]  And the Constitution requires, if you want to do any legislative business, you have to have 216 people there.
[00:06:41]  Now, you may think I'm exaggerating or interpreting the Constitution wrongly.
[00:06:47]  Well, we had a quorum show up.
[00:06:50]  Like when I quoted the Constitution, they said, you know what?
[00:06:53]  He's right on that.
[00:06:55]  So they came to Washington, D.C.
[00:06:57]  And I joke, I said, well, I made them come to work, but I couldn't make them work because ultimately I requested the recorded vote, like I've done dozens of times in the last seven and a half years that I've been in Congress, requested the recorded vote, and something happened that's never happened as long as I've been in Congress.
[00:07:15]  They said, we're not going to take a recorded vote.
[00:07:18]  Now, at that point, you know, there weren't many options, parliamentary options available to me.
[00:07:24]  So I noted the absence of a quorum and demanded them to count as to whether there was actually a quorum there.
[00:07:31]  They took like one second, like, you know, a quorum is present.
[00:07:36]  Boom, bill is passed, right?
[00:07:38]  So now, there's one of two things is true.
[00:07:43]  Either there wasn't a quorum present and they just railroaded this thing through, or I actually think they had a quorum there.
[00:07:51]  I think they had at least 216 members.
[00:07:53]  If you were watching it on C-SPAN, it didn't look like 216, but they had members up in the gallery too.
[00:07:58]  Those weren't tourists in the gallery.
[00:08:00]  So I believe they had 216.
[00:08:03]  So what does it tell you when they had enough people there to pass the bill with the recorded vote, but they still refused a recorded vote?
[00:08:10]  It tells you what this was all about.
[00:08:12]  All of their gnashing of teeth and wailing was about they didn't want to go on record.
[00:08:17]  And I had a lot of people telling me they didn't want to go on record.
[00:08:20]  I even had Nancy Pelosi tell me that she didn't want to have the recorded vote because some members weren't there because they were sick or their family members are sick and they decided not to travel.
[00:08:31]  And I said, well, that's a fine reason.
[00:08:33]  They just need to go tell the voters that's why they weren't here.
[00:08:36]  And she said, no, we need to respect their privacy.
[00:08:41]  How is it respecting somebody's privacy if the taxpayer can know whether they came to work that day or not?
[00:08:47]  I mean, that's a problem.
[00:08:48]  So because if there's one thing I know about your colleagues there, they just have the utmost respect for privacy.
[00:08:57]  That's right.
[00:08:58]  If you see during all this nonsense, by the way, they reauthorized the Patriot Act while nobody was watching.
[00:09:04]  They extended it for like 70 days with no reforms to the Patriot Act or to the FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
[00:09:14]  They didn't reform that either.
[00:09:16]  And the irony of that is that's what they used to spy on Donald Trump, candidate Trump.
[00:09:21]  And so you'd think there'd be some appetite in the White House for fixing that.
[00:09:24]  Apparently there wasn't.
[00:09:25]  They used the weapon of mass distraction, not to downplay the seriousness of this virus, but it is a distraction that allows Congress to do a lot of things that they normally couldn't get away with.
[00:09:36]  Particularly, for instance, $2 trillion of spending plus $4 trillion of printing money and buying positions, you know, bad loans and things like that.
[00:09:49]  So, anyways, that's where we are.
[00:09:52]  I got tweeted against by the president.
[00:09:55]  He wasn't happy.
[00:09:56]  By the way, I talked to him the morning of the vote.
[00:09:58]  I'm not going to say how that phone call went.
[00:10:00]  I'll just say it didn't go well.
[00:10:04]  I guessed that by the tweet.
[00:10:06]  Yes.
[00:10:07]  Yeah, the tweet was indicative, but not quite as strong as the phone call.
[00:10:12]  It was indicative of what was in the phone call.
[00:10:14]  By the way, before this vote happened, there's no way I think you can imagine how much arm twisting was done to me.
[00:10:21]  Things that were threatened, things that were offered.
[00:10:25]  I knew, I knew if I took this vote, it was going to take what would have been an easy reelection and make it a toss-up.
[00:10:34]  I mean, when you represent a district where Donald Trump's favorability among Republican primary voters is 96%, and that's not an exaggeration.
[00:10:44]  I've polled it.
[00:10:46]  And he comes at you with some tweets and maybe more later, who knows what.
[00:10:54]  The people that say I was doing this to grandstand and for political purposes, like, I want them to show me in what way, shape, or form did this benefit me politically.
[00:11:07]  I assure you, it did not.
[00:11:09]  And my staff said the day before the vote, they said, Are you sure?
[00:11:13]  One of my staff said, Do you want to be that guy tomorrow?
[00:11:16]  And I said, I definitely don't want to be that guy tomorrow, but I want to be that guy two years from tomorrow, looking back at it, because I think this is also a huge mistake, this vote.
[00:11:31]  Well, thank you for being that guy.
[00:11:33]  I mean, obviously, the bill ended up going through anyway, but on behalf of the American taxpayers, I appreciate somebody being that guy because no one else was going to do it if you didn't.
[00:11:44]  When you say that there were arm twisting and threats, aside from the obvious, you know, Donald Trump is going to not support you and this is going to be, that'll make it tough to win in the district.
[00:11:57]  What else are we talking about?
[00:11:59]  Well, you know, Kevin McCarthy ended one of our phone calls in 58 seconds the first time he called me and he said, good luck with your election.
[00:12:12]  Now, when the leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives just randomly says, good luck with your reelection, you know what that means, right?
[00:12:22]  And I had several people wish me luck with my reelection on the floor of the House because they were frankly ticked that they might have to go on the record and that they would have to show up for work.
[00:12:36]  It really is.
[00:12:39]  The government is just like anything else in the universe.
[00:12:43]  I mean, it's imagine, just try to think of it, you know, proposing to spend over $2 trillion and then being mad that someone suggested we should actually think this through and then going, but that could take 24 hours.
[00:13:01]  You might have to think about this for a day.
[00:13:04]  Now, can you, from what I've been able to understand, of course, none of us, including all of your colleagues, nobody's actually read this entire bill.
[00:13:11]  Maybe there's some staffer, some genius staffer out there who's actually sat down and read the whole thing, but we've been getting little pieces of information.

=== Rushing a Trillion Dollar Bill (14:37) ===

[00:13:18]  What type of stuff was actually in this bill other than the crummy $1,200 that they're going to send to some people?
[00:13:25]  I know I saw something about a couple hundred million dollars going to the Kennedy Center, things that don't seem very related to the coronavirus.
[00:13:33]  Well, the $1,200, I'm not going to say it's crummy.
[00:13:36]  I mean, everybody's going to like to have $1,200.
[00:13:38]  Sure.
[00:13:38]  I just meant in comparison.
[00:13:39]  Oh, right.
[00:13:40]  Yeah.
[00:13:40]  But that's the cheese in the trap, right?
[00:13:43]  It's not a very big piece of cheese.
[00:13:45]  I'm sure it's delicious.
[00:13:46]  But the trap is socialism.
[00:13:48]  And, you know, just in general, bailouts are just a bad idea because here's what you're doing.
[00:13:57]  You're going in and you are socializing the risks.
[00:14:01]  That's not capitalism.
[00:14:02]  You're telling people who own airlines, right?
[00:14:06]  You're telling them that if you make a profit, you can keep it.
[00:14:09]  But if you lose money, we're going to take care of you.
[00:14:12]  Now, where does that risk go to?
[00:14:16]  It goes to the taxpayer.
[00:14:17]  Now, the airlines have perfectly good business models when this is all over and even before this is over.
[00:14:24]  And even now, people are getting on airplanes, but eventually their business will return to normal.
[00:14:29]  It's not like we're going to not fly airplanes after this.
[00:14:34]  And their business will get back to normal.
[00:14:37]  And they may have to borrow some money or, oh, heaven forbid, they may have to sell some shares and let some other people in on their future profits.
[00:14:46]  Like that's what this is about.
[00:14:48]  They don't want to dilute their ownership of the company because that's ownership, like stock ownership is an agreement about what are your shares of future profits, not how much of what was made in the past do you get.
[00:15:02]  That's already been distributed.
[00:15:04]  So anyways, that's an example of just generally a lot of the bad things that are in this bill is that they tend to take and they're going to take care of mostly, I say, the people on Wall Street and the banks.
[00:15:19]  All right, guys, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is TalkSpace.
[00:15:26]  Talkspace, look, right now, I know there's a lot of people who have anxiety, maybe even dealing with some depression as you're kind of isolated from other people.
[00:15:35]  We all have something going on in our lives, even aside from the current crisis.
[00:15:38]  And whether it's spending too much time on social media or wanting to start a new hobby, wanting to do something in your life, but you just can't figure out how to do it.
[00:15:46]  Well, you know what helps is talking to someone about that.
[00:15:48]  Talkspace is online therapy.
[00:15:51]  It's the most convenient, affordable way to make lasting change in your life with the support of a licensed therapist.
[00:15:57]  Talkspace matches you with one of their licensed therapists based on your needs and preferences.
[00:16:02]  They have thousands of licensed therapists trained in over 40 specialties.
[00:16:06]  So if you're having something very specific that you want to work on, they'll have somebody who's right for you.
[00:16:11]  So right now, as a listener of this podcast, you will get $100 off your first month.
[00:16:16]  They're going to match you with the perfect therapist for you.
[00:16:18]  All you have to do is go to talkspace.com or download the app.
[00:16:22]  Make sure you use the promo code problem to get $100 off your first month.
[00:16:27]  Show support to Talkspace.
[00:16:30]  They support our show.
[00:16:31]  We really appreciate it.
[00:16:32]  And this is something that can really help your life.
[00:16:34]  That's talkspace.com.
[00:16:35]  And the promo code is problem for $100 off your first month.
[00:16:39]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:16:42]  Now, Nancy Pelosi is saying, now she got like the $25 million for the Kennedy Center, and then they proceeded to lay everybody off after they got their money or something.
[00:16:51]  I haven't really followed that.
[00:16:53]  I mean, $25 million is 100,000th of this bill.
[00:17:02]  Okay, like let's talk about what a trillion is.
[00:17:06]  A trillion is a million millions.
[00:17:08]  So if there are a million dollars going here or there in this bill, you could have a million of those earmarks, a million earmarks for a million dollars, and it would still only be half of what this bill is.
[00:17:21]  So I'm sure we're going to find more than one earmark in here.
[00:17:26]  And $25 million, not to pass it off, is just a drop in the bucket.
[00:17:30]  And that's what Nancy Pelosi says.
[00:17:32]  She says that this $2 trillion bill is just a down payment.
[00:17:37]  I'm not even exaggerating.
[00:17:39]  Those are literally her words.
[00:17:40]  And if you listen to the four-hour debate, that's what they're promising: is that the fourth corona bill.
[00:17:47]  By the way, I voted for the first corona bill because it went after the virus, right?
[00:17:53]  It wasn't using the virus as an excuse to bail out some companies that were already sort of on shaky ground or in front of their skis.
[00:18:02]  And later, I'd like to talk about what I think this bill should have been instead of what this bill was.
[00:18:10]  But going forward, they're planning a fourth bill.
[00:18:13]  And can you imagine if I hadn't insisted upon everybody coming to work to pass the third bill, what kind of leverage Nancy Pelosi would have a month from now?
[00:18:25]  It's going to be harder to travel.
[00:18:26]  There will be more congressmen who are ill from this virus.
[00:18:32]  And if nobody had stood up against the third bill, there's no way you can stand up against Nancy Pelosi's fourth bill because all the arguments for staying home just get stronger a month from now.
[00:18:43]  And so that's why people say, why did you go light yourself on fire?
[00:18:48]  You know, that was political suicide and I love you, but that wasn't very smart.
[00:18:54]  I say, look, there's a strategy here, and I'm looking at the long term.
[00:18:58]  And if we're going to have any leverage, and by the way, I think I increased Donald Trump's leverage against Nancy Pelosi.
[00:19:04]  It's like if she has to haul a majority of Democrats into the chamber to pass her bill instead of passing it by unanimous consent with nobody there, that's going to make it harder for her to push the agenda.
[00:19:17]  Yeah, no, I certainly can understand that argument.
[00:19:21]  I got to say, I mean, I'm beyond the point of, I think, being able to be disappointed in Congress or the presidency at this point.
[00:19:31]  But there was something about watching Donald Trump when he signed the bill into law, and he's surrounded there by a bunch of Republicans, you know, Mike Pence and others.
[00:19:42]  And, you know, they're all just ecstatic that they look, this is the biggest bill ever.
[00:19:49]  That's how they're talking.
[00:19:50]  Look, this is the biggest stimulus bill ever.
[00:19:52]  And it is like, man, these Republicans who talked a nice game.
[00:19:55]  I mean, Mitch McConnell's there.
[00:19:57]  I remember what Mitch McConnell was saying during the Obama years about runaway government and these record high deficits.
[00:20:03]  And everybody just seems to like thrilled, like any pretense of limited government principles have gone right out of the window.
[00:20:13]  It's really unbelievable how quickly, you know, an emergency situation.
[00:20:17]  And like you, I think it's a real emergency.
[00:20:19]  I don't think it's made up.
[00:20:20]  This is a real nasty virus and it's very dangerous.
[00:20:24]  But the fact that the first reaction is like, well, let's just loot the American people, rob the taxpayers to pay off every special corporate interest that we like.
[00:20:36]  And you work with these people, so you know better than me.
[00:20:40]  How is there nobody with any principles around who go, we at least need to look through this thing?
[00:20:47]  Actually, there were people who voted for the bill who told me, I agree with you, Thomas, that we need to go on record.
[00:20:53]  Like it shouldn't, it really does set a bad precedent if you're going to pass a $2 trillion bill and nobody is going to be accountable or culpable for the effects of that.
[00:21:06]  Now, I didn't watch the bill signing.
[00:21:08]  I can say that it happened on time, right?
[00:21:10]  I was the half the world was hating me because they said I was delaying this.
[00:21:16]  And that was just a narrative that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy were putting out there to say, oh, it will delay it if we do it the constitutional way, right?
[00:21:25]  And I'm like, no, number one, you have to do it the constitutional way.
[00:21:29]  If we throw the Constitution out the window for one virus, I mean, we're in big trouble.
[00:21:35]  So, and number two, it doesn't slow it down.
[00:21:38]  By the way, they had a four-hour debate.
[00:21:40]  They're saying that I was grandstanding, right?
[00:21:42]  They took a four-hour debate.
[00:21:44]  I asked for to be recognized for one minute.
[00:21:47]  Okay.
[00:21:48]  You know what they told me?
[00:21:49]  They said, well, we'll put you on the waiting list.
[00:21:52]  We'll put you right at the top of the waiting list.
[00:21:55]  They said, because all these other people expressed an interest in speaking before you did.
[00:22:00]  So you're not on this list.
[00:22:01]  And I'm thinking, wait, I'm the only one who expressed an interest in not passing this that way.
[00:22:10]  Anyways, they're actually, and by the way, there were some other people in this fight that thought that this was a bad bill and thought that there should be a vote on it.
[00:22:20]  Ken Buck was supportive.
[00:22:23]  Alex Mooney was supportive.
[00:22:25]  And Justin Amash was supportive.
[00:22:28]  And there were a couple others that I'm leaving out.
[00:22:30]  They're probably okay with me leaving them out.
[00:22:33]  But when the vote was, when they asked for the yays and nays, and everybody yelled yay, and then people yelled nay, I wasn't the only one yelling nay.
[00:22:42]  And then at the bill signing, getting back to the bill signing, I didn't watch it, but I was told that the president said, so we got this bill passed 96 to nothing in the Senate.
[00:22:55]  And he asked Kevin McCarthy, what was the vote over in the House?
[00:22:59]  And Kevin was like, well, it was a voice vote.
[00:23:05]  And so Trump said, oh, so it's like the Senate.
[00:23:09]  There were no no's.
[00:23:10]  And Kevin was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:13]  Anyways, I mean, just totally whitewashing history as if like the whole world wasn't hating on me for being a no, right?
[00:23:25]  As if I didn't like do everything I could to register my no in the record of history.
[00:23:34]  And no, they just did the bill signing and said, nope, no dissension.
[00:23:39]  Great bill.
[00:23:40]  Best bill ever.
[00:23:41]  Huge, wonderful bill.
[00:23:44]  Yeah, well, if it does give you any comfort, I'll say that at least in my experience, with, you know, I'm only 36, but I've lived through a few of these government emergencies, nothing quite like what we're going through right now.
[00:23:56]  But it's always this rush to fall in line during the emergency, and people who don't fall in line are demonized.
[00:24:04]  But when you look back at it later, a lot of times it's those ones who didn't fall in line who end up having the last laugh.
[00:24:12]  And I think about, you know, the war in Iraq being an obvious example.
[00:24:16]  And man, you know, I don't agree with Bernie Sanders on a whole lot, but he gets to throw that in everybody's face now, Joe Biden included, and say, I voted against that war.
[00:24:25]  And he's absolutely right.
[00:24:26]  He deserves to be able to do that.
[00:24:27]  And people like Ron Paul and people who stood up and voted against that war, they have a right now to brag about that.
[00:24:33]  And I think a lot of people, if they did oppose the banker bailouts, they could brag about that.
[00:24:38]  The 08 banker bailout's not this most recent round.
[00:24:40]  But I think going forward, I think history is going to be kind to you for I think it's going to become obvious.
[00:24:48]  Here's like what happened in 2008 was that they were like, oh, we have to bail out the economy.
[00:24:52]  We need all this stuff.
[00:24:53]  And then as five, six, seven years later, the entire middle of the country still had seen no economic recovery.
[00:25:01]  All of a sudden, those measures look pretty bad.
[00:25:03]  And then we ended up getting Donald Trump as a big middle finger to the whole system.
[00:25:08]  I have no doubt that this is going to lead to another disastrous economy, which will take years and years for regular people to see any benefit because we're going to stimulate out of it the same way.
[00:25:18]  Record high government spending, record low, artificially low interest rates.
[00:25:22]  Hold on.
[00:25:22]  So I wanted to ask you, because you indicated this earlier, what you thought a proper role or at least a more reasonable response would have been.
[00:25:30]  Yeah.
[00:25:31]  And before I say that, let me tell you, Jimmy Duncan, I served with him for at least four years.
[00:25:38]  We overlapped.
[00:25:39]  He was the last Republican in Congress who voted against the Iraq war.
[00:25:44]  And so on more than one occasion, he and I talked about what that vote was like.
[00:25:49]  And, you know, because they were saying weapons of mass destruction, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:25:54]  And he said, he told me he got disinvited from a church in his district.
[00:26:01]  That's how difficult it was for him on that vote and how much backlash he got.
[00:26:07]  He said it was the worst vote he took in the moment, you know, politically.
[00:26:12]  But he said, now it's the best vote in my career looking back on it.
[00:26:18]  So I take some comfort in talking to the people who've taken unpopular stands.
[00:26:25]  People say, should you vote your conscience or should you vote what your constituents want?
[00:26:33]  And I think it's my job to try and figure out what my constituents are going to want, not just today out of this bill, but two years from now or 10 years from now.
[00:26:44]  Is this good for constituents or not?
[00:26:46]  So that was the test I applied.
[00:26:48]  Now, what would a proper bill do?
[00:26:52]  Okay.
[00:26:53]  The government here in Kentucky has overreacted.
[00:26:57]  Now, in New York, I don't know if it's the appropriate level of reaction or not.
[00:27:02]  So I'm not going to judge there.
[00:27:03]  But here in Kentucky, they've literally shut just pretty much everything down.
[00:27:08]  And so people have been put out of jobs.
[00:27:10]  So I think it's fair to extend unemployment insurance, for instance.
[00:27:15]  But what we really need to do, this is a war on a virus, not, you know, if you got attacked and your country was under attack and you were in a war, would your first instinct be to try to save your economy?
[00:27:27]  Or should you fight the people who are fighting you, right?
[00:27:30]  Shouldn't you defend your country from the attack?
[00:27:33]  Well, the attack here is a virus, okay?
[00:27:35]  So instead of spending $2 trillion propping up our economy and frankly bailing out people who were over-leveraged anyway, why don't we spend like a few billion fighting the virus?
[00:27:51]  Okay.
[00:27:51]  Here's what I would do.
[00:27:53]  And I've done some calculations.

=== Testing Strategy for Masks and Ventilators (03:34) ===

[00:27:56]  One of the things the White House has been wrong about and consistently wrong, and eventually they'll change their story, is that we don't want everybody tested.
[00:28:06]  That's horsepucky.
[00:28:08]  Okay.
[00:28:09]  The only way you figure out who's spreading the virus and who isn't is to figure out who's got it, right?
[00:28:15]  And so what we need are two types of tests.
[00:28:18]  We need a test that shows whether you have it or not.
[00:28:21]  You're probably going to have to take that one more than once, right?
[00:28:24]  Because just because you don't have it doesn't mean you won't ever get it.
[00:28:26]  And we need the other test that says whether you've had it and that and getting over it has conferred some immunity on you and that you should be able to go back to work.
[00:28:36]  We need to sort all these folks out and folks should be able to sort themselves out.
[00:28:41]  And you shouldn't have to be a politician or a celebrity to get one of these tests if you want the test.
[00:28:47]  If the test costs $100, to give it to 350 million people would cost $35 billion.
[00:28:56]  That's one half of a percent of this stimulus that just passed last week, right?
[00:29:00]  It's a $6 trillion stimulus.
[00:29:04]  $35 billion is one half of a percent of that.
[00:29:07]  Okay.
[00:29:08]  So let's keep our wits about us here.
[00:29:13]  And by the way, if you ordered 35 million tests, they wouldn't be $100.
[00:29:19]  If somebody's going to get them down to $10 and you can buy a six-pack on Amazon, right?
[00:29:24]  So you could take one.
[00:29:26]  Your employer would give it to you when you came to work just because their liability is worth paying for that test, right?
[00:29:33]  They don't want other employees to get sick or the customers that come to your work if you're in retail.
[00:29:39]  So in any case, let's quit this bullpucky that we don't want everyone tested.
[00:29:44]  We want as many tests as we can get.
[00:29:46]  So we should have like a Manhattan project type effort on this, right?
[00:29:51]  Let's go to war with the virus, okay?
[00:29:54]  And the other thing, quit telling people that an N95 mask only works if it's on a doctor or a nurse.
[00:30:02]  Okay.
[00:30:03]  Number one, they're talking about, oh, well, we know how to wear them and people don't know how to wear them.
[00:30:07]  Look, I use them in the wood shop.
[00:30:09]  I use them on the farm when I'm bailing hay.
[00:30:12]  Like we've painted stuff and you wear a mask when you paint stuff.
[00:30:16]  Like everybody has used one of these at one point in their life.
[00:30:20]  N95 means it's 95% effective, right?
[00:30:23]  So if you don't get a good fit and you're wearing an N95, it might be an N80.
[00:30:28]  Okay.
[00:30:28]  But an N80 is better than an N0.
[00:30:31]  So let's be honest with people and let's say, look, these are scarce right now.
[00:30:38]  And until we overcome the scarcity, we need to make sure that doctors and nurses and first responders have them before everybody else gets them.
[00:30:48]  That's the truth, right?
[00:30:49]  Tell Americans the truth and then say, and we are undertaking this immense project to make sure that everybody can have a mask and not one that, you know, everybody can have several masks.
[00:31:00]  You don't have to wear this thing for six months, okay?
[00:31:04]  You're going to get pretty mangy after a while.
[00:31:06]  It's going to have a lot of Rona on the mask, too.
[00:31:11]  So, anyways, let's do the masks.
[00:31:12]  The ventilators, instead of going in and pounding your fist and telling GM when they tell you they can make like 6,000 ventilators a week and saying that's not good enough, I'm taking over your company because I think you should give me 30,000 ventilators a week, right?
[00:31:28]  That is not going to work.
[00:31:29]  What?
[00:31:29]  Who's going to run that?

=== Fighting Liberty Against Big Government (04:42) ===

[00:31:30]  Mick Mulvaney or Steve Mnuchin?
[00:31:32]  Like, who's going to run General Motors when you take over it?
[00:31:35]  And are they going to be, or are you going to let the CEO stay in place and you're just going to be like a middle manager and show up and like try to design assembly lines?
[00:31:45]  That ain't going to work.
[00:31:47]  Let's set up like an X Prize, okay, or something.
[00:31:51]  Let's guarantee people if they can solve this problem and produce these ventilators, that there's going to be a profit in it for them.
[00:31:57]  Okay.
[00:31:57]  I know that's a dirty word, but that will motivate them far more than walking into the factory and putting a gun to somebody's head and say, quit making cars and start making these.
[00:32:08]  But those are the sort of things like a Manhattan Project, a type scale project with so many scientists and engineers working on the problem.
[00:32:17]  Let's declare war on the virus.
[00:32:20]  Let's don't declare a war on the dollar.
[00:32:22]  Yeah, war on the dollar and a war on the taxpayer seems to be the response so far.
[00:32:27]  And I would just say that, you know, I think what you did was heroic.
[00:32:32]  And I really appreciate you standing up for the taxpayer, the Constitution, and just sanity.
[00:32:39]  And, you know, I think about my good friend, Judge Andrew Napolitano.
[00:32:43]  And Trump was saying every nasty thing in the world about him when he was saying that Trump could be impeached.
[00:32:49]  But then as soon as he turned around and he was like, hey, you know, Roger Stone is really getting railroaded.
[00:32:52]  You know, he just stuck to his principles the whole time.
[00:32:54]  But as soon as he said something Trump liked, Trump was praising him again.
[00:32:58]  So as soon as you, you know, Trump says he wants to end a war and you defend him or something like that, he'll be back on your side.
[00:33:05]  Yes, which I've done.
[00:33:06]  I've defended him.
[00:33:07]  Like I defended him during the impeachment.
[00:33:09]  I was on the oversight committee.
[00:33:11]  I've defended Wilbur Ross.
[00:33:12]  I've defended all the people that worked for the president.
[00:33:18]  But, you know, one little deviation.
[00:33:21]  And by the way, Mark Meadows, who's Trump's chief of staff, I don't know if you remember, Trump said he was going to come after Mark when Mark didn't vote for the health care bill, which was a big scam, by the way.
[00:33:32]  Thank goodness we didn't pass that.
[00:33:34]  That was going to replace mandates, penalties, bailouts, and subsidies with mandates, penalties, bailouts, and subsidies, right?
[00:33:40]  We just had a different name for everything.
[00:33:43]  And anyways, it was a horrible bill.
[00:33:45]  Mark Meadows voted against it.
[00:33:48]  And the president said, I'm coming after you.
[00:33:50]  And he was coming after a lot of the Freedom Caucus.
[00:33:53]  And now they're his best buddies, and one of them is chief of staff.
[00:33:57]  And just a shout out to Judge Andrew Napolitano.
[00:34:00]  There's a guy, you know, and I don't, Judge Napolitano and I don't always agree, but we, I mean, we probably agree 95% of the time.
[00:34:10]  And he sent me an email when I was getting hammered Friday.
[00:34:15]  And I'm going to print it out and frame it in my house, not my office.
[00:34:19]  I don't want to show it off.
[00:34:21]  It brings me comfort.
[00:34:22]  And I'm glad that he was sticking up for me during this.
[00:34:26]  Yeah.
[00:34:26]  Well, listen, I actually disagreed with Judge Napolitano about the impeachment.
[00:34:31]  I did too.
[00:34:32]  But, you know, he's a brilliant guy and he's principled and he says what he means.
[00:34:37]  And that'll get you in trouble with somebody who just wants you to fall in line all the time.
[00:34:41]  But, you know, just so you know, a lot of us out there really appreciate what you did.
[00:34:47]  I would love to talk to you again sometime when this whole thing shakes out more.
[00:34:51]  And I have a feeling that people who fight for liberty are going to have a lot to fight for in the coming years as we are really going to live through the era of bailouts, big government, and crackdowns on civil liberties.
[00:35:05]  I thought we were already in that era, but it turns out it's ramping up.
[00:35:08]  So keep fighting the good fight, sir.
[00:35:11]  And I really appreciate you spending some time with us.
[00:35:14]  Thank you.
[00:35:14]  And by the way, I am taking this virus seriously.
[00:35:18]  I voted for the first bill because it went after the virus, not the taxpayer.
[00:35:22]  And I think social distancing is a good idea.
[00:35:26]  I think self-isolation, if you're in an area where it's spreading rapidly, that's a good idea.
[00:35:33]  But when you do those at the point of a gun, that's tyranny.
[00:35:37]  And we were looking at images from China just a few months ago saying, how could they do that?
[00:35:42]  How could they close churches?
[00:35:44]  How can a government have that much power?
[00:35:46]  And that's what we're seeing here.
[00:35:48]  And it disturbs me.
[00:35:49]  So let's find the happy medium.
[00:35:52]  And let's do this stuff voluntarily.
[00:35:55]  And instead of bailing out big companies here during these hard times, let's incentivize people to fight the virus.
[00:36:04]  Amen.
[00:36:05]  God bless you, Congressman Massey.
[00:36:07]  Thank you again.
[00:36:08]  And hopefully we'll do this again sometime soon.
[00:36:11]  Thanks for having me on.