Sean Hannity Show - People Can't Work To Pay Taxes - 7.7

July 8, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:37:45

People Can't Work To Pay Taxes - 7.7

Congressman Louie Gohmert fills in for Sean and sits down with Dr. Art Laffer to discuss proposed tax cuts and the painful deficit we're facing. How was Reagan able to stimulate growth? Dr. Laffer shares his clear path to prosperity. The Sean Hannity Show is live weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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	Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louie Gomert sitting in for my very dear friend, Sean Hannity.
	Love the guy.
	People constantly ask, Is Sean Hannity really like he is on the air in real life?
	When you see or hear Sean, you get Sean.
	That's it.
	He is the same person no matter where he is.
	And it's one of the things you've got to love about the guy.
	Even if you hate some things, you've got to love him because he is awesome and he is good for America.
	And I wonder sometimes if Fox really appreciates just how good a thing they have in Sean Hannity because he is terrific.
	So I'm Louis Gomert.
	I'm a member of the United States Congress from Texas, the first district.
	And I'm telling you, I know that I don't get asked to be on television because of my looks.
	And I know I don't get asked to be on radio because of the way I sound.
	I think it's the way we think at least 75% of the people in East Texas think that a lot of the country just likes the common sense that's located in East Texas.
	I just happen to be a mirror for 75% of the views of East Texans.
	And I am just tickled to be here at this microphone, Sean's microphone.
	And I tell you, I come in here, I've got Lauren.
	Linda's not here.
	I've got Lauren.
	Lauren is awesome.
	Linda's awesome when she's here.
	And Jason keeps me straight.
	Sometimes he has to push kind of hard to keep me straight, but gets me straight.
	But just honored to be here.
	Now, I want to get right to something that I think is absolutely critical to the ongoing of freedom in America.
	We have the left that is throwing everything they can at the president.
	Like him or dislike him, let's don't make up crimes that just didn't exist.
	And what I have noticed over and over during my time in Washington is that Democrats do, not all of them, but so many of them, especially the top folks, they do what's called projecting.
	They engage in conduct that is detrimental to the good order of things.
	And perhaps it's criminal, perhaps it's immoral, perhaps it's whatever, unethical.
	But Instead of ever admitting it, they come out and accuse the other side, their opponents or the other side, the Republicans, of doing exactly what they've done when the Republicans hadn't even thought of it.
	You know, most of the friends I know, we don't think like that.
	But when you have people on the left that are thinking about ways that they can get over on good folks, good Republican people, conservatives, whether they're Republicans or not, you know, that's just not the way most of us think.
	And it's been interesting finding out more and more about Comey.
	I knew all about Mueller as FBI director, and I was one of about the only voice at the time that I was aware of that was sending out warning signals about Mueller being tapped to be the independent counsel because,
	in my opinion, it's my opinion, he did more damage to the FBI than any FBI director we've ever had, including the darker days of J. Edgar Hoover.
	And why would I say that?
	Because Mueller wanted nothing but yes men around him.
	He wanted nothing but yes men in the FBI.
	And we had just an incredible FBI, incredible Federal Bureau of Investigation.
	Now, I know every group's got a few worms, you know, a few bad apples in every barrel, but I would submit to you that when it comes to law enforcement, including the FBI, you have got so many fewer, such so much tinier of a percentage that are problematic than you do in rank and file citizens at large.
	The reason there's any problem at all is because we're human, and there's going to be a human in every group.
	It's going to be made up of humans.
	So anyway, but Mueller, he wanted yes men.
	So what does he do?
	He creates what he called a five-year up or out program.
	Well, what was that?
	Five-year upper-out.
	Sounds innocuous enough.
	Well, if you were in a supervisory position anywhere in the country with the FBI and you got to the end of that five years, you were not going to continue on.
	You had a choice.
	You either come to Washington and be a minion at a cubicle, maybe you get a better desk, but you come to Washington, you rip your kids out of their schools, you rip your family out from all their friends, and you bring them to Washington where they don't have friends.
	And by the way, for those in law enforcement that may be listening, you know it takes a while to build credibility, and especially if you're a federal law enforcement like FBI.
	Because when you come into a town, everybody wants to know, is this going to be a guy that's really helping man or woman?
	I use the guy term for both.
	If you're going to be a guy that's going to help us and be a team worker, are you going to grab every bit of work we do and then run, grab a headline with it?
	And it takes time to build that credibility.
	So we had FBI agents, special agents in charge, SACS, they were S-A-I-C.
	And when they got to the end of their five years, then they, most of them, so many of them, I don't know what percentage, got out.
	I think it was the Wall Street Journal that had a story some years back on the thousands and thousands of years of experience that Mueller drove out of the FBI.
	And this wasn't a case where we needed to clean it out.
	But what I had experienced as a prosecutor, as a judge, as a chief justice, you know, I came out of law school and I was a prosecutor and I went, boy, this is great because I know the law so much better than these yahoos I'm up against.
	Well, it turns out I knew the law better than them, but there is something to be said for experience.
	So I learned some lessons from some people that knew a lot less about the law, but knew a lot more about human nature.
	And I learned a lot from people.
	And so you had people across the country in the FBI that were in charge, and Mueller drove them out.
	He didn't want anybody in the FBI that might ever raise a question.
	Now, I know there were some people back when William Jefferson was found to have that $90,000 in his freezer, that cold hard cash, if you remember.
	I read the affidavit that they used to get a warrant to go into his office.
	They had enough evidence based on what was in the warrant to put him under the prison if they wanted to.
	They were trying to work out a deal.
	But over 200 years, because there is the balance of power, there's the check and balance.
	There's the separation of power.
	If the FBI has the right to come in any member of Congress's office and grab every hard drive, every flash drive, everything like that, without having anybody screen that to make sure there are not things that should not be seen that are completely irrelevant to that, then they're going to be able to find out who whistleblowers are.
	There would be no balance of power.
	There'd be no separation because the FBI could intimidate anybody.
	And that was clearly what Mueller wanted to do when he came charging into Jefferson's office.
	No one had ever done that before.
	It had always been that you went to the Speaker of the House, and I didn't like the law when I read it and found out what it was, but you go to the Speaker, and the Speaker has authority to give law enforcement the authority to go into your office, but only if they make sure and they bring in attorneys and they make sure that those attorneys unrelated to the FBI or the executive branch screen that information for anything privileged that's unrelated to the alleged offense.
	And that allows Congress to continue with oversight.
	If the FBI can come barging in any time, then, you know, there's no oversight.
	It's just, they're good at intimidation.
	So the courts made that clear.
	That's the way it's been for over 200 years.
	And Mueller, you're not going to be the one that changes that just to try to intimidate Congress.
	You can go back.
	I haven't looked in years, but I remember reading that Mueller made an offhanded comment about, well, maybe it's time to appoint 400 agents to investigate Congress.
	That was a shot at Congress.
	This is a mean, vindictive guy.
	And there was an article by Molly Hemingway back in June in the Federalists.
	And boy, she does a great article.
	Now, she points out that the Wall Street Journal had a story back in 2013, the political Mr. Comey, Obama's FBI nominee, has a record of prosecutorial excess and bad judgment.
	And then it goes through how Comey was at the bottom of screwing over Martha Stewart.
	Look, I understand she's a Democrat.
	I met her.
	I like her.
	And she has some really amazing ideas.
	But Frank Coatron, unbelievable.
	I didn't remember this, but Hemingway brings this out as Comey went after him for, wait for it, obstruction of justice because of a single ambiguous email.
	And the conviction ended up being overturned.
	And the first trial ended in a hung jury.
	But Quatron, by the time it all ended, got thrown out, was so scarred by the harassment, he began funding projects designed to help innocent people.
	And who was at the bottom of all this?
	It was Comey.
	And it was over a single email that was ambiguous.
	What did Comey do about Hillary Clinton's massive email scandal?
	Nothing.
	He protected her.
	And I know that there are people out there going, yeah, but what about him coming out right before the election and saying they're reopening the investigation?
	Look, there are enough quality FBI agents.
	They are bound.
	Somebody is bound to have pointed out that we have just gotten all of this information from Anthony Weiner's laptop and more that we didn't know that was actually for Huma Abbott and Weiner's emails that were on Weiner's laptop.
	Somebody surely pointed out that we have got to reopen because now we've got all this additional evidence we thought was gone.
	If Comey had not said they were reopening the investigation, there was room for coming after him big time.
	So what does he do in order to protect Hillary Clinton?
	And I know most people said, oh, no, he really went after.
	No, he protected her.
	He came out.
	He stopped anybody else from quitting at the FBI to bring out how Comey was covering up for Hillary.
	Oh, no, we're reopening.
	And I think I said it on Fox, said it somewhere, was asked, you know, well, what about Comey coming out with this before the trial?
	I said, well, we'll know what his intentions were if he comes out a day or two before the election and says she's exonerated.
	And that's exactly what he did.
	It was a smokescreen to protect Hillary.
	It was not intended to hurt her.
	But you look at Scooter Libby, you look at Judith Miller, the damage they did there.
	And then you find out that he and Mueller, you know, were in cahoots on some of these cases.
	Here's the bottom line, folks.
	We need President Trump to appoint an independent counsel.
	He has full authority to do.
	Jeff Sessions, because of his recusal on anything to do with Russia, it may bleed over into this, so it needs to be the president himself.
	He needs to investigate.
	Well, did Comey do to Jeff Sessions what he did to John Ashcroft and encourage him to recuse himself so that Comey could get a friend the job of special counsel?
	He did that with the godfather of one of his children, Gerald Fitzpatrick.
	So anyway, we need an independent counsel.
	Got to investigate the whole blooming lot.
	That means Mueller, Comey, Lynch, the Clintons, and Obama now.
	We're going to come back.
	We're going to take your calls.
	Please call in 800-941-7326, 800-941-7326.
	That's 800-941-Sean.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show, and I'm Louie Gomert.
	I can't wait to hear from you guys.
	We'll be right back.
	From number one New York Times best-selling author and radio host Mark R. Levin comes an essential new book, Rediscovering Americanism and the Tyranny of Progressivism, a searing plea for a return to America's most sacred values.
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	Available now wherever books are sold.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert sitting in for my friend Sean Hannity.
	Let's go to Jacob in Bristol, Tennessee.
	Thanks for listening to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Jacob, what do you say?
	What's on your mind?
	Hey, Louie, great monologue.
	I just agree with you on Trump needs to appoint an independent counsel to go after these people who obviously broke the law.
	Clinton, you know, I can go on and on.
	They've got away with breaking the law.
	It must be nice to have a last name Clinton.
	Anyway, I got to run and have a great day and God bless.
	Well, God bless you, Jacob.
	You're exactly right.
	Nobody should be above the law.
	I remember Chuck Coulson.
	I think he was a modern-day Apostle Paul and Watergate was his Damascus Road experience.
	But he pointed out, I went to prison for a year and a half for having one FBI file in the White House.
	The Clintons had over 900 FBI files in the White House and nobody did a single day in prison.
	It's time there was some accountability.
	So we will be finding out more about that only if we get an independent counsel and the president himself has to appoint.
	Look, I'm thrilled to be here.
	I hope you are thrilled as well.
	You're going to love our guests.
	Come on back as after the break, we've got Peter Schweitzer and a lot of revelations.
	This is The Sean Handig Show.
	Exposing government waste and abuse of your liberties every day.
	Sean Hannity is on right now.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert, Congressman from Texas, sitting in, and we're thrilled that you're listening to us today.
	I have as my guest now, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, author of Clinton Cash.
	He has a new column out in New York Post calling for U.S. officials to demand answers about Hillary Clinton confidant John Podesta's ties to Russia.
	Peter Schweitzer, glad to have you on the Sean Hannity show.
	Hey, Congressman, thanks so much for having me.
	I appreciate it.
	Well, your ears must have been burning when Podesta and my friend Maria, I hope she would consider us friends, but Maria Bartaroma was getting into it.
	And Podesta was basically saying that she was just wrong.
	She was getting ridiculous information, and she seemed to be taking pretty valid information.
	Did you see that or see a replay of that interview?
	Yes, I did.
	And, you know, look.
	Peter, I wish you could have been part of that because I just knew that your ears were burning and you were just jumping at the bits to jump in there and straighten John out.
	So now I'm looking forward to having you straighten out the places where John was not being as honest as he perhaps should have been.
	Well, listen, Congressman, I applaud Maria Bartaromo for raising those issues.
	She did a fantastic job.
	And, you know, the problem is, is that John Podesta was deceptive and in some instances dishonest about his relationship with the Russian government.
	You know, she said, yeah, he said he didn't have any stock in the Russian company.
	So go back and get your facts straight.
	Bartaroma said, that's not true, John.
	We know you own 5,000 shares.
	You were on the board of Julie.
	Is that how you say it?
	Jewel, yes.
	Jewel.
	Yes, that's right.
	You know, he would sort of purposely mischaracterize what she said so he could deny that it was true.
	You know, here's the bottom line.
	When John Podesta in 2011 was part of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy council at the State Department, he was an advisor.
	We know from the WikiLeaks emails that were released, he was advising her on everything from personnel matters to policy to speeches.
	In that capacity, when he was there, he joined the board of this small energy company in Massachusetts called Jewel Energy.
	It's actually located offshore legally through a series of complex corporate structures, but it was physically based in Massachusetts.
	And two months after he joined that board, they got $35 million in Russian government money.
	And Congressman, this is from a fund called Rusnano that the Russian science minister calls Putin's child because Putin set it up, Putin runs it, Putin directs it.
	That $35 million represented more than 30% of what the company raised.
	And two Russian officials joined the board and sat by John Podesta.
	One of them was the head of Rusnano.
	The other is a Russian oligarch who has been appointed to economic revitalization boards by Vladimir Putin.
	So they're both very, very close.
	And what's troubling is not only has John Podesta tried to sort of misdirect exactly what his relationship was, we also know that what Jewel Energy was working on was a new form of fuel that had both civilian and military application.
	And that John Podesta got 75,000 shares in the company.
	And this all took place, by the way, at the time that Hillary Clinton, through something called Skokovo, was transferring Western technology to Russia that the Pentagon and the FBI later said had military application.
	So it's a whole cluster of relationships that I think needs investigation.
	Boy, does it ever?
	Do you think Mueller will be getting into that kind of investigation?
	Well, I sure hope so.
	I can guarantee you he will not be able to do it.
	Peter, I can guarantee you he will not.
	I can promise you.
	That won't happen.
	I tell you, Congressman, the other factor I think that's so important here is that John Podesta appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to talk about the Russia hacking of his emails.
	And Maria Bartiromo, in that interview we talked about, asked him whether he was asked about his commercial and financial ties to the Russians.
	And he said he couldn't discuss it.
	What I would say is if he was as deceptive to the House Intelligence Committee as he was to the American public and to Maria Bartaromo, he's got some very real problems, and the House Intelligence Committee needs to have him back because he was not being accurate and truthful about his relationship with the Russians to the American people.
	Well, one of the problems I've had with our House leadership under John Boehner, and it didn't seem to improve too much when it comes to enforcing our jurisdiction and going after people that lie under oath.
	It's happened repeatedly, and we have not held people in check by going after them when they've lied under oath.
	It's happened many times during the Obama administration.
	And so I'm not sure that it will do much good to have them in front of a House committee because once we catch them in a lie, we don't do anything about it.
	The most we ever did was have a vote in holding Eric Holder in contempt.
	And then I think Boehner probably didn't agree to have the vote until he found out nothing was going to happen unless we pushed it after the vote, which we did not do.
	And so nothing happened there either.
	I think we need an independent counsel going into this as well.
	I mentioned earlier in the show that one of the things, and the Clintons just were incredibly good at, projecting, they would engage in inappropriate conduct, and then they would accuse opponents of doing the very thing that they were.
	And I really think that's what happened on this collusion with Russia.
	They had been engaging in collusion.
	There's all kinds of ties between the Obama administration and the Russian government.
	And G tell Vladimir that I'll have more flexibility after the election.
	And then they try to throw all of that on Trump like he threw the election his own way by using the Russians.
	Well, you know, Congressman, you know, it's been about eight months now since this idea after the election came to fruition, that there was some kind of collusion or collaboration between people around Trump and the Russians.
	And I said at the beginning, as I think a lot of people did, is, look, if something like that happens, we want to know.
	Well, you know, eight months of investigation, there's zero evidence of anything.
	What we know as it relates to the Clintons and the Russian government, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, we know that Hillary as Secretary of State during the reset gave a lot of favors and benefits to the Russians, Skokovo, this tech transfer program being one of them.
	What was happening at the same time?
	Benefits were flowing, financial benefits were flowing to the Clintons and their friends.
	You had what we just talked about, John Podesta and this deal with Jewel Energy.
	You had Bill Clinton giving $500,000 speeches, 20-minute speeches in Russia, well above his rates.
	You had Russian government officials and Russian-connected oligarchs donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
	This is all happening simultaneous.
	So the sorts of transactions or the sort of exchange of favors that people argued was taking place between Trump and the Russians, which there's no evidence for, was occurring when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
	And what we need to investigate now is how were those transactions related at all?
	And I think for anybody who was concerned about the Trump-Russia question Has to be honest and say, if I was concerned about that possibility with Trump, and now there's no evidence, we need to be concerned about that possibility having happened when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
	Yep.
	Well, and I'm talking to Peter Schweitzer.
	This is Louis Gomert sitting in for Sean Hannity.
	And Peter, my gosh, if we got a counsel appointed to really start digging, I mean, the first place I would recommend that he go is to your book, Clinton Cash.
	Here's where you start because you've got a lot already investigated for you.
	It's just laid out on a platter.
	You did some remarkable investigation before you wrote that book.
	Well, thank you.
	Yeah, it was a lot of research.
	And, you know, I think what I was most excited about when the book came out, it obviously got a lot of attention, and Sean and others were so supportive.
	But what I was most happy about is when it came out on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that the FBI took Clinton cash and, according to the Wall Street Journal, used it as the roadmap for the FBI to begin the investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
	And what we know is that there have been five field offices of the FBI investigating the Clinton Foundation, that during the Obama administration, FBI field offices were asking for subpoenas and wiretap capability, and they were turned down by the career Department of Justice lawyers to do so.
	You know, let's hope that changes because it needs to be investigated.
	And, you know, congressmen say to me, people say to me sometimes, well, look, she's not in office anymore.
	Does it really matter?
	To me, this is not at all about revenge.
	It's not about vengeance.
	It's about finding the truth.
	And we've got to clean out the cesspools where they are.
	You know, there were crimes committed during the Clinton administration years.
	And God bless George W. Bush.
	He's just, I know some people don't care for him, but I'm telling you, he's as gracious a guy as you could be around.
	And he thought he was being gracious when he came in as presidents.
	And in essence, said, you know, all right, everything that's happened in the past, that's bygones.
	We're starting fresh today.
	And the problem, that good-natured approach, allowed people who were going to leak, who were going to try to destroy his presidency.
	And that included it at most every department and agency.
	And they did, and they undermined him at every turn.
	And one of the things that's going to be really important for Congress to do, we've given the president authority to fire people at the VA for cause and not just go through all of the ridiculous hurdles that allow a felon to stay in office.
	But we have got to give the president more latitude to get rid of the bad folks there.
	But anyway, there are a lot of people that wanted to get to the bottom of it.
	And yes, I understood they had your book and they were looking, but the people at the top were not about to let anything happen to the Clintons.
	I mean, you had, surely, with all the investigation you've done, you had to be amazed to hear through the news the deals that were being cut with people like Cheryl Mills.
	You know, you let us see your laptop and then we'll destroy everything that's on it.
	And you have amnesty and we won't.
	I mean, nobody is, I've never heard of anybody making those kind of amnesty agreements.
	Just incredible, incredible.
	Yeah, no, it's remarkable.
	And, you know, look, one of the things we know about the 2016 election by looking at the exit polls is that three out of four Americans, and these are people that voted for Trump or voted for Hillary, of all voters, three out of four believe there is widespread corruption in Washington, D.C.
	And the question is, how are you going to root it out and deal with it?
	And if you adopt the posture that certain people are untouchable, certain people are just too prominent or too powerful or they have too many people that like them, so we're not going to investigate and take proper course of action if it's necessary.
	You've completely undermined people's faith in government.
	And so I think, you know, this is the only thing that's going to be.
	And I think that's where we are.
	That's where we are.
	And this is one of those issues, Congressman, that I really don't think is a right-left issue.
	It's a right-wrong issue.
	Well, it shouldn't be a right-left issue, but I'm afraid it gets down to that.
	No, you have done phenomenal work, and we really appreciate you coming on and illuminating us.
	The Clintons need to be investigated, and it's going to take an independent counsel, Peter, I think, to get that done.
	The career folks that want to get to the bottom of this will not be allowed unless we get somebody independent in there to do it.
	But, man, thank you so much for coming on.
	Peter Schweitzer, go check out Clinton Cash if you haven't read it.
	Great read.
	And this is the Sean Hannity Show, and we'll be right back.
	We'll take your calls.
	800-941-7326-941-Sean.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show, and this is Louie Gomert sitting in for Sean.
	Let's go to Jim in Florida.
	Jim, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hi, Congressman.
	It's a pleasure to speak with you.
	It was great to talk to you.
	Go ahead.
	My question is real quick is why do we keep starting these investigations when we don't finish ones that we originally started?
	You still had the IRS scandal when they were going after the Tea Party.
	You have Fast and Furious.
	Benghazi is still out there.
	And every time they just keep talking about starting investigations and they never finish.
	And even when they do, nobody's held accountable.
	Yep, you're exactly right.
	And that's what I pointed out to our leadership, I guess, last October when they were saying, look, it's not looking good for Trump.
	We better make sure we keep the majority so we can hold Hillary accountable.
	I was going, are you kidding me?
	We hadn't held anybody accountable.
	I couldn't agree with you more, Jim.
	And that is exactly why I am saying we've got to have an independent counsel.
	That is an investigation.
	They have subpoena power and they got prosecution power and they can put people in jail.
	That's where we need the investigation.
	Congress, you know, we call them up, we get statements, and that may be helpful to use in perjury charges later, but we got to do this.
	This is Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louie Gomer sitting in for Sean Hannity.
	You've got the Sean Hannity show.
	Now, look, I was one of the people that bought into the line.
	Yeah, we need to be able to buy health insurance across state lines.
	That's going to bring down prices.
	But then the more I got to thinking about it, I'm going, wait a minute, if you buy across state lines, this is the way markets work.
	Maybe California, Illinois, where they've had a lot of big malpractice verdicts and things, maybe their prices come down because they start buying in places like Texas or Iowa, places where they could get it cheaper.
	Maybe New York gets it cheaper in other places.
	I'm sure it would be a lot cheaper.
	But then overall, the cheaper policies, they get more expensive because you got people from like California with more expensive claims filing on their Texas insurance company.
	Well, Wouldn't it just equalize?
	I mean, I was a history major and not an economist, but I do agree with John Kenneth Galbert on one thing about economy.
	There are only two kind of economists, those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.
	But in any event, Paul Gosar from Arizona represents the 4th congressional district.
	He's a member of the Freedom Caucus.
	And he is a very close, very dear friend of mine.
	I think the world of him.
	And anyway, Paul was the one really pushing this in the House, this idea of, wait a minute, that's not going to cure things just by across state lines.
	What we've got to do is we have got to stop the exemption that health insurance companies have from the antitrust laws.
	They were allowed to monopolize.
	And so who do I have on the Sean Hannity show with me, Louie Gombert Substitute, is fellow Congressman Paul Gosar.
	Paul, welcome to the show.
	Thanks for having me on, Louie.
	Well, why don't you explain it?
	I'm sure you can do quite a bit better than I have so far, but explain why it is so important that we end the exemption for health insurance companies that was put in place by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945.
	And folks, that was 1945.
	You know, way back when, Louis, in 1944, there was a case of Southeastern underwriters versus the U.S.
	And the Supreme Court ruled that the insurance industry was subject to antitrust laws.
	The insurance company ran to Congress.
	They got an exemption.
	And maybe at that time it was warranted because they were just an infant type of industry and they needed to share.
	But today they've got the best of all the world.
	They got the best mathematicians, the best algorithms, the best computers.
	And what ends up happening is we need to open up the competition.
	And this is what's key here.
	When you open up competition, put your rates lower.
	And it's going to help not just the insurance market of health premiums, but also those panels of doctors that are held on by insurance industries.
	This is one of the first things that you have to do to liberate a marketplace because the insurance industry has so many opportunities and so many different products to produce, but the federal government doesn't allow them.
	And what's in it for them?
	I mean, we've got to allow them to compete.
	And if you believe in fair markets, they compete when they compete for the consumer's dollars.
	And so this is a key component of a new birthplace in the healthcare industry.
	Well, Paul, let's just give, for example, if you were, well, say, a health insurance company went to a hospital and said, look, we want you in our network.
	We want to do business with you, but there's a new health care law out here, and there's a whole lot of new health insurance companies popping up, new MediShare, all kinds of things.
	And so we're putting in our agreement that if you do business with anyone else, any of these other insurance companies, we're going to cut you out of our network.
	Would that be the violation of antitrust laws if you didn't have an exemption?
	Well, what would happen is, is that currently in Arizona, we actually have insurers that own hospitals, own doctors, and service areas.
	That's a perfect definition of a monopoly.
	And so what would happen is, is that the full forcing of the federal government is understood to actually break that up so that there's competition in that marketplace.
	You know, you see this every day with grocery stores like Safeway and Bashos around the country.
	When they get too much of a marketplace, the feds break it up and return it back to the states.
	And that's what's key here is that the 10th Amendment has jurisdiction, states' rights has jurisdiction over insurance and health care.
	And what we're trying to do is return that so that we see the best options, giving it back to the government that's closest to the people.
	Imagine the idea of federalism, Louie.
	There you go.
	That's how we get the marketplace going.
	Well, you know, it just should make sense to most anybody that if you're going to if you're going to have real competition across the country, it's not going to do it if people buy across state lines and health insurance companies still have this antitrust exemption.
	You know, we're told that 30 to 40 states have one insurer left in the state.
	Well, it occurs to me if we don't end the exemption from antitrust laws and all we do is allow people to buy across state lines, then instead of having 30 to 40 states with one insurer, you will have one country with one or maybe two insurers because they'll be the monopoly for the country.
	Doesn't that make sense?
	That's exactly where they're going.
	They want a single payer.
	And welcome, Canada.
	Welcome, Great Britain.
	Welcome, European model.
	It doesn't work.
	And, you know, by the way, folks, welcome the VA system.
	You know, how well has that helped our veterans who have put everything in harm's way?
	You know, we're not rectifying.
	This is going to be an albatross to try to fix, Louie.
	And you know it as well as I do.
	Once you've pushed one bug, it squirts to another area.
	Well, you're the one that brought it to my attention, Paul.
	And I like to think that I've been up in our conference almost as much as you have demanding, pushing that we get a vote on your bill in the House that will allow the end of the exemption for health insurance companies from the antitrust laws.
	Absolutely.
	And as you know, it'll be passed 416 to 7.
	There really wasn't anybody against it.
	There were six members from the Congressional Black Caucus that voted against it just because they wanted to give it to John Conyers, who's a friend of mine and held this, you know, held this aspect of their dear.
	Yeah.
	Well, the thing is, it doesn't matter which party you're in, you really don't want to be running for elections on the platform of supporting monopolies.
	That just can't be a popular thing to do.
	But now, there was a Senate version in the last conference, and I didn't know until this afternoon we don't have a Senate bill of this.
	And I bet they would come close to 100 votes if McConnell would bring it to the floor.
	Well, and that's what we're trying to do right now is find the right person to carry the water in the Senate.
	This is a no-brainer, Louis, as you and I.
	Well, now, Paul, there are a lot of things that are no-brainers that never get to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote.
	You know that.
	And just because it's a no-brainer doesn't mean it's going to get to the Senate floor for a vote.
	And let's face it, if you are a huge insurance company and you like the idea of being the monopoly left standing, then you'd probably be willing to contribute a lot of money to help keep people in power that would keep that from the floor to make it law.
	Here's the problem, though, Louis, is that eventually you get down to a single payer.
	And so what ends up happening is you end up getting an insurance that basically is just one insurer.
	So all the rest of them go by the wayside.
	And then what happens?
	The government takes it over from the single insurer that's left.
	There's room for everybody.
	And this is a liberating aspect for the insurance industry to come up with the new ideas, the nuances.
	That's why you want to get them closer to the consumers so that they can see what new ideas can be brought forward.
	It's not hurting people with maybe pre-existing conditions.
	It's bringing the resources that they need at the proper time and the proper timeframe to get that care that they so desperately need and to get people the health care that they want.
	It's not what the federal government should dictate.
	It's what people want.
	I mean, this is something that is so critical and so easy and so basic to understand that it's a win-win for everybody.
	It is.
	And it ends up creating so much more competition.
	So I hope the millions of listeners that are faithful to Sean Hannity that are still hanging with you and me, they will start telling their senator, you need to help push this bill to the floor of the Senate.
	We're not concerned so much with buying across state lines because ours is probably going to go up.
	Because seriously, I mean, California, Illinois, some of these states have high costs, theirs will come down.
	But some of us with lower costs, even though it's high to us, it's not going to go down just buying across state lines.
	So this is the more important bill, the much more important bill.
	And I wanted to get you on, and I'm glad you were able to come on, Paul, so that we could educate America.
	And you weren't just a good dentist, man.
	You're a good educator, Paul.
	Thanks for being passionate and explaining it.
	I can't give back, Louie.
	If it's one thing that I can give back is to teach.
	This is a teaching moment.
	Americans are afraid because the federal government has promised everything and delivered on nothing.
	And this is something that the doctor, the dentist, the town actually can deliver on.
	This is something that when we don't know the right answer, get the best people forward and empower them to come up with great solutions.
	And that's what America deserves.
	Well, you are awesome, Paul.
	Thanks for coming on the show.
	That is Paul Gosar, Congressman from the 4th District of Arizona.
	And we will be back after this with the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louie Gomert.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Louie Gomert, Congressman from Texas, sitting in.
	And I'm glad to have the listeners in East Texas listening to Sean through the station I do, KDBB in Tyler, Texas.
	And shout out to Paul Gleiser, Mike Edwards, and John Sims, all our friends there.
	This is a Sean Hannity show, and I'm surrounded by competence.
	That's a wonderful thing.
	But let's go to some calls.
	We're going to be taking your calls the rest of this hour and all the next hour.
	So call 800-941-7326-800-941-Sean.
	Let's go to Mark in Independence, Missouri.
	I've always liked the sound of independence.
	I think Harry Truman did too.
	Yes, good man.
	Like you, Louie.
	It's an honor to speak to you.
	You're one of the authentic leaders in Congress, one of the few, and it's appalling the way Boehner treated you just for doing what you said you would do.
	It was a great to be with me.
	Thank you.
	I didn't realize that.
	That was great information, and the Senate should pass that.
	But speaking of that.
	But doesn't that make sense, Mark, that the solution is not buying across state lines?
	It's stopping the exemption from antitrust laws.
	They can monopolize.
	Yeah, that would solve a lot of things.
	But you're probably skeptical about whether or not the Senate's going to pass a health care bill, right?
	Yeah, I was just going to ask you that.
	I mean, it passed in the House, and nearly everyone who ran for Senate ran on repealing Obamacare, but it seems to be stalling.
	So many special interests are coming forth.
	There's Wobbly.
	There's so-called moderate Republicans.
	There's these fake protests.
	People bust in.
	And what do you think it's going to take to get it through that for something other than just Obamacare light?
	I mean, are they going to be able to pass it?
	Will it get done before the August recess?
	Should they not have an August recess?
	Where do you think it stands right now?
	You and I, I hope this doesn't scare you, but we've shared a like mind on this issue.
	I've been extremely concerned about the Senate passing anything.
	If you remember when Harry Reid was in charge, there were good bills, so many good bills that came to the Senate, and he did his members the favor of never bringing them to the floor for a vote because it would have exposed them.
	They would either had to cast a vote that would have got them defeated, or they'd have to vote for something that was a good bill that they didn't want passed because who was donating, that kind of thing.
	But look, Mark, I told the president a month or so ago that this is feeling a lot like 2005 when Hastert and Fris did not want to do a lot of heavy lifting.
	I think Paul Ryan is capable of doing a lot more heavy lifting than was done back then.
	And I want to give Paul Ryan credit as Speaker.
	He brought the Gosar bill to the floor, and a lot of people said, well, we're not sure it's going to pass.
	416 votes.
	I mean, what Democrat could afford to say, I'm for monopolies.
	So it's going to pass, and it'll pass like gangbusters if it's brought to the floor.
	But this is where people putting pressure on their senators to talk to the majority leader and say, let's bring this to the floor and get it done with regard to the Gosar bill to end the exemption from antitrust laws.
	But with regard to repealing Obamacare, I don't know about you, Mark.
	I was excited to see that, you know, the president said maybe we should, if the Senate can't do it, let's just do a repeal and then we'll get the replacement done.
	There are people that have proposed let's just vote to end the tax code as it is on a date certain, and then that forces us to get something as a substitute before then.
	So that may be what we want to do.
	The thing that gets me, though, that's what we promised we would do.
	We did it in the last Congress.
	It passed the House.
	It passed the Senate.
	And then initially, some were saying, oh, but we don't think that could get past the bird rule.
	Yes, it can.
	It did in the last Congress.
	So it doesn't make sense that we couldn't go ahead and bring that same bill back, just repeal the stinking thing on a date certain, and then we have to come up with a solution.
	Thanks so much for the way you think, Mark.
	I love it.
	And we will be right back and take your calls.
	Call 800-941-7326.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Louie Gomer.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show, and this is Louie Gomer sitting in for my friend Sean Hannity.
	And I am so proud to be here.
	I feel like Minnie Pearl.
	I'm just proud to be here.
	But let's get to the phones.
	You want to call in 800-941-7326, 800-941-Sean?
	Let's go to Tim in Milford, Connecticut.
	Tim, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Pleasure to talk to you.
	Thank you, Congressman.
	I'd like to first say, hands down, Barnan, Sean couldn't have picked a better guy to do this show while he's gone.
	You're doing a great job.
	Well, aren't you kind?
	You know, Foxworthy says when people hear a Southern accent, they normally deduct 50 IQ points from how smart they think you're.
	I don't think that's good.
	So thanks for being open-minded, Tim.
	But as smart as you are, I'm looking forward to hearing what you've got to say.
	Well, it's not going to be good because you have wisdom and experience, which is what we need.
	But as far as the American public, we're looking at Washington.
	When they say drain the swamp, I mean, honestly, every single decision and vote that the congressmen and senators make, almost 98% of them, not you, but 98% of them, the first thing they think about is how is this going to affect my reelection?
	If I vote this way, they're not thinking what's best for the American people.
	They're thinking what's best for me to get re-elected.
	Well, that's an interesting point to me.
	We have a majority in the Senate, and we have a majority in the Congress.
	We should be released.
	We have a majority with the President.
	You're exactly right.
	But let me give you a little clue, a little secret.
	I was surprised when I went to orientation within two weeks after winning my first election to Congress.
	And the most common used phrase, most frequently used statement during the orientation, whatever it was, three days or whatever, was this.
	The best thing you can do for your country is get reelected.
	And they kept drilling that in.
	Now, the first time they said it, I went, well, that's interesting.
	And then eventually I'm going, wait a minute.
	And it started irritating me so much because, you know, there are times you just have to take a stand based on what's right.
	And it may lead to, you know, you're being thrown out of office, but you stand for what's right.
	I mean, heck, down in Texas, we had a great role model in Sam Houston, at least role model in some areas.
	But he didn't think that secession was a good idea.
	He didn't think slavery was a good idea.
	And he didn't have very many friends when he passed away.
	Sometimes you have to take a stand for what's right, even though it's going to cost you politically.
	But that little bit of insight, Tim, so that starts being drilled into your head when you first hit Washington.
	The best thing you can do for your country is get reelected.
	When the best thing we can do for our country is just do what we promised our constituents we were going to do when we got there.
	But the indoctrination starts early.
	And then the other thing that goes along with it is, you know, you are so awesome.
	You're incredible.
	You're the best we've ever had.
	And we just need you to be a team player, see, and we're going to get these things.
	And you're going to change the country.
	There's no limit to what you're going to be able to do.
	We just need you to be a team player.
	Then you're going to get the chairmanship, the A committee, this, that, and the other.
	And then after, you know, I've had guys tell me that I, gee, Louie, I went and told them, look, I've been a team player for two years.
	We hadn't done anything we've said.
	And I got elected first time two years ago.
	And I'm going, look, it hadn't helped to be a team player.
	Did we misread you?
	We thought you were a team player.
	So you're going to be one of these guys that just got to be out there, be a big shot.
	You're not going to be part of the team.
	No, no, I've been part of the team and we hadn't done anything.
	So that is the kind of indoctrination.
	And it works better than any kind of threat.
	It works better than any kind of promise.
	Just be a team player because everybody wants to be part of a team and you certainly want to be part of a winning team.
	But I agree with Newt Gingrich.
	we don't get health care reform passed and into law, if we don't get tax reform passed into law, then we stand a good chance of losing the majority in the House.
	I think that's exactly right.
	So, gee, what an easy thing to do.
	Just do what we said we would do and we don't lose the majority.
	But anyway, you're right on, Tim.
	You're right to be concerned.
	People do worry too much about the next election.
	But I have good news for all of those people that worry too much about the next election.
	All we've got to do is pass health care reform.
	We've got to repeal Obamacare like every one of us promised.
	And as I said earlier in the show, why not do what Trump tweeted out?
	Let's repeal it and then come back with helping make sure we got a free market coming out of that.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Let's take another call.
	How about, gosh, call here from Texas, my own district in Nacogdoches.
	Michelle, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Great to have you on.
	Thank you so much for taking my call and thank you for all the time.
	Well, I'm excited you're listening, Michelle.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, we really appreciate it.
	No, my call is more about, you know, what we can do as far as helping people, you know, pay for their health care.
	It seems to me like if the Democrats get reelected and they take the House, that they are going to impose single payer.
	Yeah.
	And Michelle, I hate the term single payer because what it means is you're going to have government run health care, socialized medicine.
	Single payer sounds too pleasant for the disaster that that ends up being.
	But you're right.
	That's where we're going.
	And if we don't get this, you're exactly right, Michelle.
	And my thing is, I mean, I've worked in health care for 30 years, and, you know, we talk every day about what's going on.
	And it seems to us, statistically, that the sickest people use 80% of every health care dollar.
	And to us, statistically, I think that that's probably people over age 50 and kids less than age five.
	That seems to be where, you know, the majority of money is spent.
	And since we already have systems in place, Medicaid and Medicare, why not just, you know, do the age difference so that they're covered.
	And then that way it takes the pressure, you know, off the insurance companies and, you know, also provide care for those people.
	You've got a good point, Michelle.
	The thing is, we have not had free market forces at work.
	That's the most powerful weapon in bringing prices down in anything when free market forces are at work.
	We have not had free market forces at work in the health care industry for decades.
	No, we haven't.
	Because the good best example of that is you don't know what anything costs.
	You get a bill from a hospital, you get a bill from a doctor, you know, or from, say, the radiologist, whatever it is.
	You get the bill and you see a number.
	That is not what the government is going to pay.
	It is not what the insurance company is going to pay.
	You don't know what's going to be paid.
	And I think until we get back to truth in the cost of health care, we're never going to be able to successfully and consistently bring down the costs.
	We ought to have a requirement that the costs are posted.
	If you have advertising online, you ought to have it posted online, but absolutely posted at the office so that when you get treated, you know what that cost is, whether you're Blue Cross or Aetna or you've just got cash and that's all there is.
	Now, I've had some people say that a doctor tell me that their contract with an insurance company says it prevented them from taking the same amount that that insurance company paid, taking that same amount from somebody who's paying cash.
	Others have said they dealt with the same insurance company and they didn't put that provision in.
	But for heaven's sake, a person that's coming in that has a health savings account, which is where I think is the solution to getting us back toward free market principles and patients having more control.
	Then you have insurance that has a very high deductible, but you got cash in your health savings account that'll cover all of that.
	So that's where I'd like to see us get.
	But in the meantime, until we know what we're paying, you know, nobody chooses to go to a doctor because of how much they charge.
	We did when I was little.
	My mother, one time, I said, well, why aren't we going to the same doctor we did last time in our little town of Mount Pleasant, Texas, grown a lot now.
	But anyway, the answer was, well, he went up on his prices and both of these doctors are just as good.
	So nobody does that anymore because one charges more.
	So I'm hoping that's going to be a big part of the solution.
	But Michelle, I can't tell you how grateful I am you're listening there in Nacogdoches.
	And by the way, we have a new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.
	And some years back when I met him the first time, I was talking about East Texas and oil and gas.
	I knew he was president of Exxon.
	And he was saying, yeah, you know, I think the Hainesville Shale gets over into Nacogdoches County.
	And I think, you know, that's going to do a lot of good.
	And of course, Center Texas, they're benefiting from the gas that's there that nobody knew for so long.
	And that Bozier Shale under that, and he's naming off towns in East Texas like Timpson.
	And I'm going, wait, how do you know so much about East Texas?
	He said, oh, Exxon had sent me to Tyler to work out of that office at one time.
	So when I saw him recently, I said, well, there are a lot of people in East Texas that are pleased that we have the East Texas connection with the Secretary of State.
	And he said, oh, it runs deep.
	He said, my twins were born in Mother Francis Hospital there in Tyler.
	So we got an East Texas connection, and we will claim that.
	But let us go to Bryce in Lubbock, Texas.
	I understand that you're feeling betrayed by Congress is what it says here on the computer.
	And gee, I can kind of understand your feelings there, Bryce.
	Yeah, and, you know, you made a point just a caller or two ago that if they would vote to do what's right, that this would solve our problem in America.
	And I've always thought that until recently, I don't like Obama-like.
	I don't like those versions.
	But the way Congress works is by compromise.
	And so the congressmen that are saying, I cannot vote for that bill.
	It doesn't do everything I want.
	They kept us from moving the bill forward.
	And yet they were voting their conscience on what was right and why they got elected.
	Well, but except that from what I didn't read the Senate bill, Bryce, but from what I understand, it was basically Obamacare-light.
	And if we're going to simply just, you know, tweak around the edges of Obamacare, then the American people are going to suffer.
	I don't think there's anybody in the House or Senate that's a Republican that didn't promise to do a repeal.
	Maybe there's somebody, but I don't remember.
	And I know the president promised to replace, but most of us felt like if we can repeal Obamacare, we still need to do some things to get a competitive free market system at play and to get costs under control and get back to a doctor-patient relationship without the government or an insurance company between us and our doctor.
	I didn't grow up with somebody in the government or insurance company between me and our doctors in Mount Pleasant.
	I mean, that just was unthinkable.
	But that's all you got now.
	Your medicine, you know, what treatments you get.
	That's all based on what the insurance company or the government says.
	But, Bryce, I understand your feeling, but we have got to get Obamacare repealed.
	Period.
	Exclamation point.
	We've got to get it done.
	We promised.
	We just got to do it.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	We'll be right back with more of your calls.
	800-941-7326.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Louis Gomert.
	Come on back.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert sitting in for Sean.
	Let's go to Susanna in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
	What's on your mind, Susanna?
	Thanks for holding.
	Hi, Louis.
	So good to talk to you.
	And I have to keep it short.
	So I'm going to just say, I understand that the politicians in D.C. are scared, although I don't understand why they are, because, look, President Trump had the media against him, the Rhinos against him, the Democrats against him, and the illegal voters against him.
	And he still won because we, the people out here in the Twitter world and in real world, got out and did everything we needed to do to get him in.
	And so we can do that again.
	I want you to tell us, speak to the Twitter world, what we need to do.
	Do we have to show up in person on a particular day?
	What do we need to do, Gome?
	Gomer, could we?
	Louis.
	So hi, Susanna.
	Could we have to get this done right?
	I have a feeling over who died because of Obamacare.
	Well, oh my.
	Well, I'm so sorry about that.
	We need to hammer, keep hammering senators and representatives on the Gosar bill.
	We passed it.
	Senate needs to bring it to the floor and pass it.
	And we need a repeal.
	We don't do that.
	We're not going to be able to do anything.
	Repeal, repeal, repeal.
	Keep sending that message.
	Thank you.
	Oh, Susanna.
	We'll be right back with more of the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louie Gohmert.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert sitting in for my friend Sean.
	And we're glad you're listening in.
	You know, sometimes it's just great to talk to people that are so informative and so well educated in areas and so wise to what's really going on.
	And then if you throw in a sense of humor and just being a really fun individual, what you get is a guy named Dr. Arthur Laffer.
	And he was founder, chairman of Laffer Associates, was a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.
	He's the one that told President Reagan that he needed to bring down taxes by at least 30% in order to turn the economy around.
	And that's exactly what it took.
	But the deal he made with Tip O'Neill actually kept it from kicking fully in until 1983 and 83, just as Dr. Laffer said.
	That's when the economy recovered.
	But anyway, I asked my friend Dr. Laffer if he would come on the show because there's something particular I wanted to talk to him about.
	Art Laffer, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Thank you very much, Louie.
	It's great to hear your voice.
	It's great to be on the show.
	I'm a big fan of both of yours.
	Well, you know, I'm a fan of yours.
	That'll get you in trouble in some circles, Louis.
	Well, no, nope, not in any circles I care about.
	Okay.
	But I'm telling you, back years ago, well, you have spoken to Republicans and Democrats alike.
	You just want good policy.
	You want good laws put in place.
	But what has been shouted so often and murmured behind closed doors so many times, oh no, we may get a bad score from CBO.
	It'll kill our chances of passing this bill.
	And one of the two things that the president and Republicans alike promised is a big tax reform.
	Let's throw out the old huge income tax code and let's put in a simple system, but then constantly the line comes back.
	But what about the CBO score?
	We'll get a terrible CBO score.
	But we need to cut taxes so the economy can take off.
	But what about the CBO score?
	What's your answer to that?
	Well, you know, I don't think the CBO should do the scoring.
	I really do not.
	I mean, they're a branch of government.
	They should do the accounting, and that's very correct, but they shouldn't make the political estimates as to what's going to happen because then they're just part of the political process.
	And you'll find exactly what you say, Louis, is that congressmen and senators will try to follow the CBO score rather than doing what's right for the country.
	We need a low-rate, broad-based, flat tax and get the hell out of the way and let the economy grow, no matter what the CBO or anyone else says.
	That's so good.
	Well, and just to let listeners in, it's been maybe five years or so ago.
	I had asked, he wasn't speaker then, he was chairman of the budget committee, if he would agree to sit down at a dinner with you and me and Steve Moore to talk about how we could get rid of CBO and have actual competition in scoring where we could score the scores.
	And we had a fantastic dinner that night in Washington.
	And Paul was intrigued.
	And you took it so seriously.
	You actually created a model how that could be done, didn't you?
	I do have a model how that could be done.
	And the model is very clear.
	It's sort of common sense.
	Now, it's not a common sense model.
	It's a math model.
	It's based on actual data.
	All of that stuff.
	It's done professionally and academically correctly.
	But it comes out just as you and I would expect.
	People don't work to pay taxes.
	They work to get what they can after tax.
	And it's that very after-tax incentive that creates the growth and output in employment in this country.
	I've looked at the average tax rate of the U.S. income tax rate.
	It's very statistically significant and powerful.
	And the higher the rate, the worse the growth.
	The lower the rate, the better the growth.
	I've looked at the progressivity of the tax holds, Louie.
	The same thing.
	The more progressive your tax codes, the worse the performance of the economy.
	I looked at the Social Security tax, the corporate tax.
	I've looked at all of these, the highest income tax rate.
	They all are extremely important and affect growth in this country exactly the way you and I would think they were, although they were developed from models, from math, from data, and without bias, without prejudice, without tilt.
	And it's just amazing how they work and work really well.
	Well, what's your answer to people that say we can't just pass a flat tax without adding a border adjustment tax or getting a bunch of money back from health care reform so that we can pay for the tax cuts?
	What's your response to those people?
	Very honestly, if you have a good tax cut, you'll cut taxes this year and you'll pay for it with very rapid economic growth in the future, not this year, where you'll destroy the growth that would be created by the tax cut.
	It's just a, think of an entrepreneur development business.
	Does he need to make profits on the first minute of the business?
	No, he's got to put in money, capital, effort, time, et cetera.
	And then what he hopes for is down three years down the road, he makes money.
	And that's exactly what you do with taxes.
	It's exactly what we did with Reagan, what we did with Thatcher, and what we've done in all these other cases that we're Kennedy.
	And it works beautifully, Louie.
	You think it would get us back up to 2% years, and then you make your money in the out years.
	You think it would get us back up to 2% growth or maybe even 3%?
	I hate doing that.
	No, you go for it.
	From January 1st, when you said the tax cuts took effect, from January 1st, 1983, until June 30th, 1984, now that's 18 months.
	That's a year and a half's worth of period there.
	In that 18 months, how much did the U.S. economy grow in real terms, GDP growth?
	That's a good question.
	What's the answer?
	Well, the answer is 12% or an average annual rate of 8% per annum for a year and a half, Louie.
	Oh, my.
	I did not realize the 60s under Kennedy.
	Nothing happened to Harding and Coolidge.
	And let me tell you, the problems you solve with economic growth like that.
	All of a sudden, people have good, high-paying jobs, and they're taking off welfare.
	All of a sudden, you get tons of revenues pouring into the coffers and you solve it.
	And state and local governments become solvent.
	There are no more Illinois or Wisconsins or Middle East.
	But some say West Virginias or Kentuckies.
	Like Ireland, they had a low tax rate, and then they got into trouble.
	And some point back to the Reagan years and say, hey, they ended up running a deficit.
	But my understanding is that as the money poured into Ireland or poured in during the Reagan years, you had Democrats here that were spending the money.
	They just got giddy spending more money than anyone.
	I was very involved in the Irish tax cuts.
	We got the corporate rate down at 20%.
	That was fantastic.
	Fantastic.
	They called it the Celtic Tiger.
	And during the Great Recession of 2008, they had a really big hit.
	They got hit really hard.
	They are the fastest-growing country in the European Union with a 12.5% corporate tax rate.
	Why the hell don't we just do that too, Louie?
	It makes sense.
	Now, do you know where everyone is investing in Ireland?
	Well, I know, but I do know this.
	There were several of us.
	Yeah, there were several of us in Congress.
	The capital is always doubling.
	You said I was funny when you were talking about it.
	You are funny, and that's good.
	The capital is always doubling.
	That's good.
	Thank you.
	There were several of us who went over to China some years back trying to see why so many businesses were going to China.
	I thought I knew the answer.
	I thought it was a waste of time.
	Well, it's the unions.
	It's the regulations.
	Well, those were huge problems.
	But over and over, the number one answer was that the corporate tax rate just made it too attractive to go to.
	In 1970, in China, 96% of all business went through state-run enterprises.
	Today, it's down to 22%.
	That's called a tax cut.
	That's why China grows like mad and we don't.
	Well, and it's also why I've encouraged the president, don't let people talk you out of the 15% corporate tax because that will suck businesses back into this country.
	Like much better than any tariff or any tax or anything else will.
	It's great, Louie.
	You know, you want to pull businesses in, you don't want to hit them in.
	That's so true.
	Well, it makes me excited thinking about the possibilities if we will just go ahead and do the tax cut, get the taxes down.
	You know, with all of the talk that Obama had about the evil rich, he finally admitted on video admitting that, and it was the first time in our history he had to admit 95% of all the income went to the top 1%.
	While he was president, under his mean-spirited position toward the wealthy, he separated the wealthy from the poor even further.
	And what you're talking about is when you give people a tax cut and let them use their own money, the whole economy rebounds.
	Everybody does.
	The dream in America.
	The dream in America, Louis, has always been to make the poor rich, not to make the rich poor.
	And Obama substituted making the rich poor for good common sense economics as how do you make the poor rich?
	I mean, Kennedy put it so beautifully when he said the best form of welfare is still a good, high-paying job.
	That's so true.
	And I wish the CBO would understand that.
	And you come from Texas.
	You know what you do.
	I come from Tennessee, where we just clean house because we have the lowest Texas taxes in the country.
	Well, you moved from California to Nashville.
	Isn't that amazing?
	I moved from Karl Marx City to Adam Smith Village.
	Well, that's fantastic.
	But anyway, I just had to have you with your wisdom on because so many in Washington keep saying we've got to have the border adjustment tax.
	We've got to have this tax.
	We need to keep some of the Obamacare taxes because we've got to keep that to be able to cover what our tax cuts.
	No, we don't.
	I've got to do one favor.
	I've got one policy that I'd love to have you espouse and see what you think about it.
	The problem with Congress often is they spend other people's money.
	That's right.
	And the authorities are responding to radical left-wing groups or whatever it is there.
	My view is that Congress should be like all the rest of us.
	We should pay them on commission.
	If we have a 3% growth rate, I have no problem with Congress getting its pay.
	4%, they should get double their pay.
	5%, triple their pay.
	But if they only get 2%, no pay.
	If they make 1%, they owe the people their pay back.
	And I think you should put them on, because if they had to spend the money and bear the consequences, they'd never vote the way they moved.
	Well, yeah, if we got paid on a call.
	They're going to put the rest of government on commission just like all the rest of us.
	Well, that would sure make people look at what actually drives the economy and what hurts it.
	Even Maxine Waters would vote correctly.
	He has a very big taste for money.
	Well, when we were talking some years back about having competition in scoring instead of having CBO, you know, and have universities, whether S ⁇ P or Moody's, others might get involved, but score the scores.
	And then you suggested, because you're always into having competition, you said, yeah.
	And in fact, if somebody gets within a small margin of area, you could pay them a bonus for being so close to what, and we would score the scores, and then we would be able to know more accurately what a bill really would most likely do to the economy.
	It's like merit pay for good teachers.
	Yeah.
	It's like I didn't think we could do that.
	The top 5% of kids in school on their SAT score is giving a big bonus for doing really well in school instead of just for playing basketball.
	Well, but that sounds like you're prejudiced against bad teachers, and we can't go there.
	I'm not prejudiced against them.
	I just want to pay them less.
	That's all.
	They can be fine.
	Bad teachers have a role in life.
	Dr. Arthur Laffer, I love you.
	You are awesome.
	And I hope people get to pass this on to their senators that are worrying about what we do about taxes.
	Just do the tax cuts.
	15% corporate tax.
	That's it.
	Everywhere you read 35, you change it to 15 and then go home.
	I love it.
	The economy growing like mad.
	I love it.
	I love it.
	Well, this is the Sean Hannity Show.
	Thank you so much, Dr. Arthur Laffer.
	We'll be right back with more of Sean Hannity.
	This is Louie Gomert sitting in.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Louis Gomert sitting in for my friend Sean Hannity.
	We have got Ed in Indianapolis, Indiana.
	Ed, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Person Gomert, it is a pleasure to speak.
	It is my pleasure.
	I really think you should do this more often.
	I love doing anything I can for my friend Sean.
	But thank you.
	What's your observation about health care?
	Well, I think you're right on.
	I think the fact that you go, I go, but someone else pays.
	I think if we all went out to a restaurant and someone else was paying at the end of the meal, the bill would be a heck of a lot higher than if each of us were chipping in our own money.
	But Ed, the bills that you get from healthcare, that's not actually what gets paid.
	You know, we don't even know what gets paid by the insurance companies in the government.
	That's a separate bill that we're not allowed to actually see.
	A lot of times if you even ask, they can't tell you.
	Oh, I have asked, and that's a great point.
	I've asked people that I deeply respect, heads of hospitals, you know, how much for a single bed, single room.
	Well, Louie, it just depends.
	You know, what's the disease?
	Is it Medicare, Medicaid?
	Is it, you know, Blue Cross, Anthem?
	Who's paying and what kind of policy do they have?
	And they are really being honest.
	They cannot tell what it actually costs.
	Well, they ought to be able to tell.
	We need to get it to where you know what you're paying.
	And I think that's where health savings accounts makes a difference.
	I think if people see, look, I've been paying $800 a month, or some people I'm hearing have paid $1,000 a month, having sucked out of their check for health care.
	Wow, you know how good you'd be sitting 10 years later after you were putting, say, 10 of your $12,000 into a health savings account and just had catastrophic insurance over the top of that?
	You'd be so much better off.
	To the latest breaking news when he hits the air.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louie Gomert sitting in for Sean, and we're glad to have you here.
	I'm the Lowly Legislator Louie from East Texas, and glad to be sitting in for my friend Sean.
	We're glad you're here.
	There is so much going on in Washington.
	Of course, the most important things are going on across America.
	It's unfortunate that we do so much in Washington that has an adverse effect on what's going on around the country.
	But, folks, you've heard so much about the hacking of the DNC, the hacking of the Democrats' email.
	And we know that Wikileaks got a hold of them, and so much was published.
	And, of course, Hillary complained that when people found out she'd been lying about some things, it hurt her voting.
	And that's shocking, shocking, I tell you.
	But anyway, something that has really been basically pretty low under the radar, the Daily Caller has been one news group that just has pursued it.
	And they have a reporter that's been quite the investigator.
	And he's been digging stuff out when things just amazed more people aren't really digging like Luke Rosiak is.
	And we have him with us on the show.
	He's an investigative reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
	He's been reporting on a Pakistani family who allegedly misused their position as IT workers for dozens of House Democrats, not a single Republican, and apparently been paid over $4 million.
	That's what's being alleged since July of 2009.
	Luke, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Thanks for having me.
	Well, you have done amazing work.
	I've quoted you many times, read from your articles on the House floor, trying to get people to be at least somewhat curious about what is going on.
	I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you wouldn't believe would happen in real life that members of Congress or anybody of sound mind would hire somebody from any country, but, you know, Pakistan happens to be the country and have them work on their computers.
	And apparently, these people never had a proper background check, yet they had total access to the members' computers.
	Why don't you tell us what got you to digging on this?
	Well, like you said, I mean, the House basically, their information technology systems have been compromised, but you wouldn't know it from what you see in the media.
	Back in early March, there was a tiny little story in Politica that said, quote, five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members' office and committing serious potentially illegal violations on the House IT network.
	And that was enough to get you going?
	Yeah, that got me going.
	And I heard that they were brothers.
	Originally, you know, the media buzzfeed did a little thing on it, and they said some House IT employees have been implicated and they're brothers, but they didn't name them.
	And I was able to find out who's the only group of four brothers that works for Congress or three brothers.
	And it turns out to be these guys, Imran Awan, Jamal Awan, and Abid Awan.
	And then there's also they had two of their wives on the payroll as well.
	So it's, you know, it's an epitome on its face, but it goes well beyond that.
	And basically, the more that I looked into these guys, there was red flags, every single aspect of their background.
	Well, like, what kind of red flags, Luke?
	Well, for example, one of them has a criminal record.
	They have...
	Oh, that is a definite red flag.
	My goodness.
	And these are people that have total control over and access to the members of Congress's computer system, all of their computer, the information in their computer systems.
	Now, I've been told if you have access to the congressional computer system for one member, then it's not that hard to hack into more of the system itself.
	Have you heard anything on that?
	I haven't heard that, but I know for a fact that these are the guys who set up the email accounts for the members and their staff, and they worked for well over 20 members.
	And I know that they could read all the emails sent in and received by those 20 members who are all Democrats, and some of them are on the Homeland Security Committee and the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee.
	And these guys mostly didn't show up for work, by all accounts.
	It was partially a ghost employee ring.
	But they also were operating this car dealership that took $100,000 from an Iraqi politician named Ali Al-Atar, who is a fugitive from the U.S. Department of Justice.
	So while they're on the payroll of House Intelligence members and they can read members of Congress's emails, they're taking money from an Iraqi politician.
	Well, and wasn't there somebody, I mean, that's bad enough, but wasn't there somebody that the Owan brothers owed money to and they got him on the payroll of the Congress?
	Yeah, you know, there's this guy that was working at McDonald's and they put him on the payroll for Congress as an IT guy.
	So, you know, we do hear a lot about hacking of, you know, the DNC and all these various things that are very real and very serious.
	And part of this pattern is that there was a serious security breach in the House of Representatives, and no one's talking about it.
	And the members who put these guys on the payroll, including the McDonald's employee, they refused to answer any questions.
	So it's kind of like, did that guy really show up?
	I mean, he was flipping burgers.
	Why did you think you were paying him?
	What did he do with your computers?
	And if he wasn't doing it because he didn't know how, then who was it that had full access to your computers?
	Well, what was your understanding about the stolen, the equipment that was alleged to be stolen?
	Were those computers that they had taken off the Capitol Hill or allegedly?
	What's your understanding?
	You know, that's a whole different thing that I don't really know much about at all.
	When you look at the House payroll records, you can see that these guys were being paid as much as chiefs of staff.
	They were making $160,000 or more.
	And that's the highest that a congressional staffer is allowed to make, because other than that, they'd be making more than members of Congress if they made any more than that.
	But they were getting part-time pay from various different Democrats, right?
	Isn't that how that works?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And so they had access to all those different members of Congress' email to their systems, and apparently they were able to access that remotely, weren't they?
	Yeah, you know, apparently they were basically taking all of members of Congress's data and funneling it to an off-site server.
	And, you know, basically I've heard that they replace computers with what they call thin clients.
	So basically, the staffer is sitting there and has essentially a monitor, but all the data is stored somewhere else, which is not in the Congress's possession.
	It's not in conformance with the rules.
	No one knew about it.
	And basically, they were running a server that it could have been out of their house.
	It could have been somewhere else.
	But they had full control over it, and they had copies of all these members of Congress's emails.
	And now the Capitol Police have announced that they're suspects in a criminal investigation.
	But members of Congress, who they worked for, have been very reluctant to condemn them or talk about this.
	And the reaction is very strange.
	You think that when someone's staff has done something bad, you condemn it, you forcefully condemn it, and you move on.
	But these guys have really downplayed it.
	And there is strange that they have copies of their emails.
	That is very strange.
	Well, it's not strange that the Democrats wouldn't condemn it because these guys have copies of their emails.
	But it is interesting that Republican leadership has chosen just to keep this downplayed.
	Just from my experience, if this had been Republicans that had hired Pakistanis who came in and got paid, and they were charged with the kind of things that have been charged or alleged here and under investigation now, I think they'd be having press conferences every week talking about how outrageous this is,
	exposing the congressional computer system to this kind of access by people that absolutely should not have had access to this kind of information.
	But the response has been: well, but the people that are on the intelligence committee and on Homeland Security, they weren't accessing that information through their regular email.
	That was all protected, and that hasn't been compromised.
	But you know that there are emails that go back and forth that don't actually mention the classified material, but actually can give indications of what's going on.
	So it's just amazing to me that more people have not really gotten upset about what has happened here.
	And if the head of the DNC had these people set up her computer system for congressional office, it brings the question about did they help her with the DNC computer system?
	Could it have been these people that made it look like the Russians hacked?
	I mean, there's just all kinds of questions that get raised.
	Do you know if they did any work for the DNC?
	Well, if you search for Imran Awan's name in WikiLeaks, you'll see that he did have the password to W. Wasserman Schultz's iPad.
	And DNC employees didn't even have that when they needed to get onto her iPad.
	They said we ought to call Imran.
	He was like her right-hand man for technology issues.
	But I'm not aware of him setting up anything on the DNC.
	But he did have access to that.
	That's pretty compelling.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Yeah, so this definitely connects back to Wassiman Schultz.
	She's the one who's really the only member here who has continued to refuse to fire Imran, who has been her guy since 2005.
	And there's just an incredible congressional hearing where Wasserman Schultz, she's on the committee that gives out the budget for the Capitol Police.
	And again, a lot of people haven't even heard about this investigation, but it's serious enough that the Capitol Police did seize a computer connected to Wasserman Schultz's office that has clues about what Imram was up to.
	And she threatened consequences in a public hearing to the chief of police if he didn't give back that evidence.
	And the Capitol Police explains, well, we need this to hold the hacker responsible.
	And she doesn't seem to care.
	Kind of sounds like the DNC when they refused to turn over their system to the FBI so they could determine whether or not Russia really was involved in hacking the DNC server.
	We still don't know that.
	We've had to take others' words because they won't let any U.S. law enforcement look at the server to make that determination.
	But it sure raises lots of eyebrows, and I'm sure glad you're on the case.
	And would you say your last name for me, Luke?
	Luke Roziak with the Daily Caller name.
	Roziak.
	Well, I wanted to make sure I was saying it right.
	Luke Roziak, y'all need to read his stuff.
	It's amazing.
	And just appreciate you being on the Sean Hannity show and illuminating the audience.
	Thanks so much.
	We'll be right back with more of the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert sitting in for my buddy Sean.
	Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken.
	And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first Mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down.
	They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II's sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer.
	A million Polish people did not ask for wealth.
	They did not ask for privilege.
	Instead, one million Poles saying three simple words, we want God.
	In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future.
	They found new courage.
	Was our great president, President Donald J. Trump, speaking in Poland?
	I've been there.
	I've been an exchange student in the Soviet Union back when it was the real Soviet Union, and they turned in, turned a cathedral into a museum of atheism.
	They demanded an absence of God.
	There was the Russian Orthodox Church.
	But that's one thing the people of Poland were hungry for.
	And when the Pope came there in 1979 and the people demanded, we want God.
	I mean, that's incredible.
	I didn't realize that.
	But President Trump brought that out.
	And it takes me right back to Thomas Jefferson's quote.
	Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are a gift from God?
	One that most people aren't aware of, Jedediah Morris.
	Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present Republican forms of government and all the blessings which flow from them must fall with them.
	He was the father of Samuel F.B. Morris.
	But folks, the president was on to something, and you're on to Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Louis Gomert.
	Let's don't forget God.
	You'll be back tomorrow?
	No, that'll be a best job tomorrow.
	You'll be back Monday and Sean will be here with you.
	God bless you.

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