Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed congressional correspondent for The Epoch Times, Mark Tapscott to the newsmaker line to comment upon the recent release of Biden’s budget proposal.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line, our good friend for many years, Mark Tapscott, who’s now with The Epoch Times. Good morning, Mark.
Tapscott: How are you, Michael? What’s up?
Leahy: Well, I’m delighted to have you here. You are an Oklahoma State graduate. You and I have so much in common in terms of the people that we know.
Tapscott: Yes.
Leahy: You were in a Ph.D. program and they snapped you up to go to work for Conservative Digest back in the 80s. That’s when Richard Viguerie was running it way back then.
Tapscott: You know, actually that goes back even further and man, am I impressed with your memory? That was in 1976. Richard Viguerie owned it, and Lee Edwards was the editor who hired me.
Leahy: The great Lee Edwards. What a great guy he was. And then you, you went on to the Washington Times and of course I back about 14 years ago. I spent about a year working with Richard as the editor of the ConservativeHQ. And, uh, yeah, was, we’ll spend some time in Washington.
And you’ve been with Heritage Foundation, The Daily Caller News Foundation, and now you’re with The Epoch Times. But I wanna talk briefly. In July 2018, you became the founder and editor of Hill Faith: Good News for Congressional Aids. Just tell our audience briefly about the importance of that project.
Tapscott: There are two things in it. Number one, from a spiritual perspective Hill Faith, is about sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, uh, with individual congressional aids, not the senators or the representatives but the aids who work for them and who do 95 percent of the work on a daily basis, tremendously influential and frankly, a very hostile environment overall but one that desperately needs to hear the gospel. That’s the essence of it. And it’s an apologetics ministry and anybody who’s interested in finding out more can go to hillfaith.org. And we’ll tell you all about it.
Leahy: And it’s interesting, somebody who’s involved in Christian Apologetics, who is also an old school journalist in Washington D.C. now working for The Epoch Times, boy that is a small but persistent group, isn’t it?
Tapscott: I suspect I’m the only guy that would reach that would satisfy that description, especially when you add the fact that I also served for five years in the Reagan administration as a Reagan political appointee.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you, Mark.
Carmichael: How many aids that you all, uh, your group talks with is preaching to the choir, and how many are, are open to, let’s just call it, conversion?
Tapscott: Let’s be realistic about, uh, the congressional staff. There are about 20,000 of them overall. Um, the majority of them come from, um, and it’s a pretty smart group. I mean, they come from the top schools in the country, and they tend to be mostly liberal.
They tend to have a very secular outlook, and in many cases, they’re very hostile to anything having to do with spiritual things and particularly with Christianity because they view it as, a manifestation of white privilege. So right off the top, you’re looking at probably 30 percent of the total who are believers or they come from a still very much Protestant Christianity kind of culture, mainly from the south.
Leahy: Exactly. Let me ask, uh, uh, and we wanna hear more about that at some future time, but tell us about this budget, this, this ridiculous tax and spend budget that, uh, the Biden administration’s dropped. What’s in it and where’s it gonna go?
Tapscott: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve been in D.C. as a journalist, and the other things that we talked about, since 1976, Jimmy Carter, or actually Gerald Ford was president when I first came up here. And I’ve tracked budgets by every president since then.
And I have to tell you, the one that Biden unveiled yesterday is by far the worst from the standpoint of the negative impact it’s gonna have on millions and millions and millions of Americans. It is full of tax increases, literally trillions of dollars in new taxes. It projects the biggest spending in American history in one year, $6.7 trillion.
It adds over the next 10 years if it’s approved about $19 trillion more to the already record level of national debt that we have. It’s gonna spend $10 trillion in the next 10 years just paying the interest on the national debt, and that’s more than we will be able to spend on defense and Medicare.
Carmichael: Why didn’t Biden bring this budget a year ago when he had control of the House and the Senate and he could have passed it?
Tapscott: Well, you know, we were still, and that’s one of the interesting things. That’s a really good question. This budget, if, you know, if it’s approved and it won’t be, it’s dead on arrival. But if it were approved, um, the, the annual spending would be $6.9 trillion. And that’s higher than it was; it’s about 55 percent higher than it was in 2020. This is a massive spending and taxing explosion that Biden is proposing.
Carmichael: My answer to my own question is that this budget is not a serious budget. It’s a political tool.
Tapscott: Oh, absolutely.
Carmichael: I don’t think that Biden would’ve brought this budget, uh, to the, to the Congress if the Democrats were in charge because the Democrats don’t wanna vote for it. Especially the so-called moderate Democrats are the ones that are in swing districts. Would it serve McCarthy’s interests at all to bring this budget to a floor for a vote and have just enough Republicans on the fence where Democrats are forced to vote yay or nay on this budget?
Tapscott: Boy, wouldn’t that be an interesting situation? (Chuckles)
Carmichael: Republicans need to be able to say that there’s bipartisan opposition to this stupid budget. Well, the only way to have a bipartisan opposition is to force some Democrats in the House to vote. And then now they’re on record either for it and they have to defend it. Or they’re against it and which gives the Republicans leverage.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed official guest host and Grassroots Engagement Director of Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee Grant Henry in studio to discuss the Democrat’s multi-trillion-dollar spending package and how they have connected moral values to products.
Leahy: Joined in studio by the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Grant Henry. Ben Cunningham has passed the baton to Grant. I think the reason is that he doesn’t like getting up at 3:30 am in the morning.
Why would anybody not like doing that? (Henry chuckles) And you are prepared to get up at 3:30 a.m. in the morning.
Henry: That’s God’s time, man. (Leahy laughs) That’s when the real work gets done. I’m telling you.
Leahy: Grant, we were talking during the break, and there may be some fraying going on among the Democrats in Washington, D.C. Tell us about that.
Henry: Yes. Look, I think y’all the pressure is working. The pressure you’re putting on these Democrats, especially in DC, it’s working specifically as it pertains to this boondoggle of a $3.5 trillion spending package.
We already heard that Democrat Senator Joe Manchin last Sunday said he will not support the three $5 trillion package in its current form. Now, Kyrsten Sinema has also come out, and Politico is reporting that she apparently told Joe Biden, they had a private meeting on Wednesday that “If the House delays it scheduled September 27 vote on this spending ing bill or if it fails, she will also not be backing the reconciliation bill.”
Not just her, Michael. Representative Kurt Straighter over in the House, one of approximately ten moderate House Democrat members is playing hardball with leadership over there. He said that several members of their group are on the same page about this.
Some of the lawmakers have convened and say that the message is that it’s up to chain leadership to convince them that they need to keep these two bills together. And saying, if they delay the vote or if it goes down, then I think you can kiss reconciliation goodbye.
Leahy: I’m glad you said that because I thought you were about to say, kiss something else. (Laughter)
Henry: Maybe that’s what some people are feeling. But if this doesn’t make sense to some of y’all, the reason why this whole idea of keeping them together and keeping it up together. What they mean by that is Nancy Pelosi is taking a big gamble in the House.
She’s trying to satisfy the progressives in the House by saying look. If you pass both of these things together, the one $2 trillion in big air quotes here infrastructure package, at the same time as the three $3.5 trillion boondoggle bill, then the progressives will be satisfied.
The moderates in the House are saying, look, I’m not for this nonsensical three $5 trillion spending. The parliamentarian in Senate just said that you can’t include amnesty on the Senate side. So you’re pushing stuff in there that has nothing to do with spending.
Leahy: And from Breitbart News, I’ll read the story. The Senate parliamentarian ruling Sunday effectively kills any chance of illegal alien amnesty through 2024. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s rule that the Democrats plan to slip a massive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens into a bill does not comply with the Byrd rule.
That’s a former majority leader, Robert Byrd, regarding budgetary reconciliation. Democrats hope they could use their $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill to pass an amnesty.
MacDonough said Democrat lawmakers could not use reconciliation, which primarily relates to spending changes to the budget. To make sure such a drastic policy change as granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Henry: Here’s the calculation as far as Politico sees it. They think it’s a progressive think that if they band together and threatened to kill this infrastructure bill, the $1.2 trillion, it will convince moderate members to go along with the larger reconciliation package.
But multiple sources, including a senior Democrat aid and several in the decenters camp are telling Politico that the left is misreading their colleagues. If Nancy Pelosi gambles here it is to keep these two ridiculous things together, $4.7 trillion worth of spending to keep them together to satisfy the progressives, the moderates are saying we’ll kill all of it.
We’re not going to risk our reputation of $4.7 trillion worth of nonsense spending that will hit the people least able to afford it. So here’s how I think we win as Republicans. visit. stopthespendingspree.com. Sign that letter.
I think if we continually push this message that $4.7 trillion is wasted spending with historic tax increases that would lower worker wages and crush small businesses. Massive energy taxes and California-style mandates will add hundreds of dollars to your energy bills and it’ll put the government in more control over your health care.
Michael, this bill has nearly half a trillion dollars in healthcare spending. That’s one and a half times more than it was in the entirety of Obamacare.
These types of messages will force Nancy Pelosi to make a distinction between the two bills, possibly separate them, or have moderates kill the entirety of all of them. It’s encouraging for me. I think we keep the pressure on.
Leahy: Grant, we need encouragement. And I’m glad you’re encouraged because if you’re encouraged, I’m encouraged. And our listening audience, which really needs encouragement, is encouraged as well.
Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee was also encouraged. He tweeted this out yesterday. He said the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Democrats’ mass amnesty plan cannot be included in a budget bill.
Their tax and spend spree remains dangerous for our economy. But on immigration, Democrats will now focus hopefully on the massive border crisis they’ve created and ignored. I think hopefully was the active word there Grant.
Henry: Yes. The immigration situation is something that needs a full-on look. Republicans continue to believe that immigration is still good, but our system is broken especially in times of unprecedented economic challenge.
Republicans, we stand behind the idea that we welcome immigrants who are motivated to improve their lives and contribute to society that will enrich American lives.
Many immigrants or entrepreneurs who start businesses create jobs, generate demand for other goods and services, which in turn requires businesses to hire more people. It works out better for all of us!
However, Democrats in this administration need to acknowledge that Americans are feeling unsafe about their health and are feeling anxious about their economic future, and may feel threatened because of that.
They also need to acknowledge that there is an unprecedented crisis going on at the border and we simply cannot afford to kick this issue along extreme party lines anymore.
We’re dealing with real situations here that have real effects on real lives. This is no longer theoretical, Michael. We need to build a better immigration system for the long term.
We also need to focus on fixing the broken system immediately. I feel like what Democrats are doing is trying to cram something in an alleged spending bill that does not do service to what we really need to focus on here in this country.
Leahy: Democrats also want to do this, I’d be delighted to hear your reaction to this. They plan a $12,500 tax credit for pricey electric car purchases. This is at The Tennessee Star. Tennesseestar.com. House Republicans are arguing against a Democratic proposal to increase the $7,500 taxpayer-funded credit for electric car purchases to as much as $12,500, arguing that it would disproportionately help wealthy Americans who can afford to buy pricey electric vehicles.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have proposed increasing the credit as part of their party’s filibuster-proof $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill which includes new social programs and billions for electric vehicle infrastructure. Your thoughts Grant.
Henry: Go some research on the amount of energy it takes to create one of those cars versus the amount of energy that you’re saving out of it. What kind of metals do you need to get those batteries? What is going on?
Leahy: I think it’s Lithium.
Henry: What’s the human cost involved?
Leahy: That’s pretty darn high from what I can tell. It’s interesting because when you look at what the Democrats on the left have done is they have attached moral values to products.
So an electric car is a moral good. A car powered by gasoline is a moral, bad. That’s the simplicity of it. But the reality of it is if you look at the power and the impact on the environment, to me, I think that the evidence is that electric vehicles have a more destructive impact on the environment.
If you go all the way back to the key factor, which is lithium batteries, the mining of lithium is extraordinarily destructive from what I’ve read.
Henry: No, exactly. There’s a human toll involved as well. There’s child labor, possibly in some of the situations going on to mine some of this stuff out.
Leahy: It comes from third-world countries.
Henry: And I think you hit it on the head when you add a moral component to pushing some of this in the guise of, I don’t know, doing something to say, save the world or carbon tax credits or a Green New Deal or anything that you’re really trying to push through an ulterior motive, you get a problem because you’re pushing something you don’t fully understand.
You’re pushing something to win in PR points but not understanding what the policy might actually be doing to our country.
If we really want to have a conversation about energy, I don’t know why nuclear is not brought up every single time. But no one ever brings that up anymore. I don’t know. Maybe for reasons I don’t fully understand.
Leahy: Nuclear is interesting because it was for a period of time, morally bad. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas in the China Syndrome movie, morally bad. But now they don’t know what to do because it doesn’t have bad emissions on it.
But, you know, way back when, 40 years ago, the left and Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas and Jack Lemon all said it was bad. Personally, I think the idea of Adam Smith’s idea of the marketplace working, that is a way to go.
We’re moving more towards the government working and telling everybody what’s a good product, what’s a bad product. I say it’s none of their business.
Listen to the third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Nashville attorney Jim Roberts to the newsmakers line to discusses the continued winning as the tax referendum nears a vote on July 27 ballot.
Leahy: Joining us now on our newsmaker line by attorney Jim Roberts, the man who put the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act on the ballot. I think it’s gonna stay there. Where are we in terms of the legal fight, Jim?
Roberts: Well, good morning to you! We are still winning. We are on the ballot for July 27 on all six amendments. The litigation launched this Monday, with Metro going full force, trying to suppress the vote right to vote on this.
But it doesn’t look like they’re having much success. It’s been a very legally technical type lawsuit. It’s not very interesting to watch, but essentially, Metro is doing everything they can to try to keep people from even being allowed to vote on this.
Leahy: But they’re not succeeding.
Roberts: Not so far. And it’s taking longer than I thought it was going to be. I stopped by on Wednesday. It’s a very technical lawsuit. There’s not a lot of witnesses. I don’t think there’s going to be any witnesses.
It’s really just an argument of lawyers. But Metro still can’t really articulate why the people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. They just don’t want them to.
Carmichael: Jim, I mean, with all due respect, Mayor Cooper has made it clear that the reason that he doesn’t want people to vote is that they’re stupid. He got up in a church and said that the reason in California, in a church of all places, that’s the irony is dripping on that in that regard to that.
But he got in front of a group of people in church and said that the people in California, the fact that they have a referendum is the reason their state is such a mess. And that if they just left it up to government employees and government officials, that California would be just a lovely place with very low taxes and a very light touch from the government.
And it’s all the people who are the problems. I wish Cooper would get up and tell the judge that the judge is too stupid to have a right to vote on this.
Roberts: Well, that’s right. And I’m sure Mayor Cooper got all that information from all those Californians who fled that state because of their high taxes and irresponsible government. Having a referendum is not the problem. The problem is a decade of overspending and irresponsibility.
Leahy: Exactly.
Roberts: That’s the problem.
Carmichael: And if we can get this referendum passed, it will force the powers to be to sit down and hopefully make the best decisions they can make, even though they don’t want to. But these people need to be forced to think and to manage.
They need that. Now then if they choose to fire the best people just to stick their fingers in the eye, then that’s an irresponsible act. But anyway, go ahead. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
Roberts: No, you’re absolutely right. It’s really sort of sad to me that the only time that our police and firefighters come first and this Mayor lied, is when it’s time to start cutting the budget.
Leahy: (Laughs) That’s a great line, but true.
Roberts: And it’s really true. You’re right. What this will do is restrict the government, but force them to make hard choices. When the government has an unlimited checkbook, they don’t make a lot of hard decisions.
They just decide where to spend the money when it’s all free money. And this will force them to make some decisions. And I guess if Mayor Cooper wants to defund the police first, he’s got a right to do that.
I don’t think that’s what the people want. He has a staff of 30 people making over $100,000 a year. Maybe he could fire one or two of those people and get his own coffee.
Carmichael: The other thing he could do is he could sit down with the Board of Education and say, we have got to greatly cut back on the number of non-teachers that are in our government-run education system.
And he won’t do that. He made it clear when COVID hit that the one thing he would not do is lay off a government employee. Now here businesses are closing left and right, and revenues for the city are still strong and getting stronger, by the way.
And what the Mayor if this referendum passes, one of the things they’ll have to do is sit down with the Board of Education and say, all right, we’ve got thousands of bureaucrats in our school system. We need to cut that in half.
Roberts: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Leahy: Jim, let me ask you this. There’s another lawsuit from a group called the Nashville Business Coalition, which looks like just a bunch of special interests. They are represented by a very able attorney, Jamie Hollins. Where is that lawsuit going?
Roberts: That lawsuit got put at the children’s table at Thanksgiving dinner. (Leahy laughs) That’s the only way to say it. That lawsuit is going to go to trial on July sixth. This will be over by then. He’ll be an afterthought.
The Nashville Business Coalition is really just a PAC. They are pro-business political candidates. They’re not representing voters. They’re not representing citizens. They’re absolutely representing businesses that want to elect pro-business candidates.
Carmichael: When you say want to elect pro business candidates, are you saying they want to elect candidates who help the businesses that do business with Metro?
Roberts: Absolutely.
Carmichael: So it’s not pro-business candidates. It’s pro-handout.
Leahy: Pro-handout.
Carmichael: Pro I’ve got my handout and I want to get money from the government.
Roberts: Absolutely. And the more you can they werThey supported a lot of the candidates to get them to do the amp to support the business community at the expensive neighborhoods.
And they really have no interest in the citizens of Davison County. If it was up to the Nashville Business Coalition, taxes would be even higher, and there’d be more subsidies to the downtown businesses.
Which is great. I love Nashville being a strong powerhouse, but we focus all of our time and energy on the downtown and not our neighborhoods. And that comes at a cost.
Leahy: Jim, a lot of these special interests who oppose the referendum to roll back the taxes have raised a lot of money. They’re already on the air with television ads painting false pictures of the sky is falling.
What’s your reaction to those ads? And are you going to have enough money to push back against those ads?
Roberts: We certainly need all the donations that we can get. All of our money is coming from Davidson County residents. We’re up against business coalitions that are subsidized by the city.
They’re using our tax dollars to run a campaign to raise our taxes. And that’s a reality. That just happens in governmental fights. All of our money is coming from citizens and groups that are interested in saving the parks and rolling back this tax.
We won’t go on television. That’s an extravagant expenditure, but we’ll spend money on radio and on social media. It’s really about informing people and educating people. One of the most disappointing things I see of the opposition’s campaign is how inherently dishonest it is.
They just can’t even tell the truth to help themselves. A lot of this, as you see, they’re talking about how the city’s going to lose revenue, but they won’t even admit that if we end lifetime benefits for council members and the mayor, we’ll save money.
It’ll be more money for schools. If we quit giving away our parks and public lands for free to out-of-state developers we’ll have more money for our schools and firefighters. They won’t even admit that I’m trying to save money for the city.
They just wanted to the doom and gloom hysteria. That’s all they have and that’s all they’re ever going to have.
Carmichael: That’s what McWherter did. That’s what Sundquist did. And history shows that they were both very, very wrong. McWherter didn’t try nearly as hard to be as wrong as Sundquist did and he can’t get a speaking engagement in front of his family because his policies were so bad.
A bigger government is not good for any community. And Nashville’s government is already too big. Are the government employee unions pitching into the special interest for this dark money?
Roberts: I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure they will. Anyone who’s beholden to the government is going to be against this. Let’s just be honest. It doesn’t surprise me at all because the teachers union thinks that they can get more money for teachers if there’s just a blank checkbook.
And in some ways they’re right. If we have unlimited spending then everyone gets more money. What bothers me the most about the unions is that they’re important. The police officers and the firefighters, the teachers are the most important things we do.
They should be the ones saying, hey, why don’t you cut these other wasteful things and focus on what’s important? I want them to focus on what’s important.
Leahy: Jim Cooper is and John Cooper are the Cooper tandem that wants to be the elite to tell everybody what to do.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Nashville City Hall” by Nicolas Henderson. CC BY 2.0.
