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. – guest hosts Grant Henry and Ben Cunningham welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the potential consequences if the Senate parliamentarian passes Democrat’s large spending bill, the PRO Act, and the unionization of America.
Henry: Crom Carmichael is in the studio with us. How are you doing this morning, sir?
Carmichael: Good morning. I’m doing fine. Thank you.
Henry: (Henry chuckles) That’s good. Now, as you walked in the studio, you did say that you had a little bit of a different take possibly on what’s the Democrats’ hopes sort of plan was with the agenda. What the end goal might be? Where are you coming from in that?
Carmichael: It’s all the other stuff that’s in the bill that has nothing to do with the money that they’re trying to pass as part of reconciliation. And if the Senate parliamentarian goes along with it, then the filibuster will be done away with without doing away with the filibuster.
It’s making millions of illegal immigrants legal. It’s changing the voting laws or is attempting to change the voting laws. It is all about giving Washington and the bureaucrats and the regulators more power.
And the way I look at the division in the country, it’s very similar to France before the French Revolution. If you are connected to the government in France, either part of the government or you benefited from the government or you are in the elite, then there are a set of rules that applied to you that were very different.
And there are actually a set of courts that adjudicated claims against you that were completely different from the courts and the rules that affected 80 percent of the population.
And so when the French Revolution actually got going and the elites who were semi-opposed to what was going on with the government, but then once it got going, they ended up being killed also.
Henry: So what you’re saying, possibly, maybe, is that some of the other things outside of the actual spinning of this bill could create a sense of class or caste system in America?
Carmichael: Well it’s happening now.
Henry: I agree. I hear you.
Carmichael: But the caste system is are you connected or are you part of the government? Are you connected to the government? And, for example, if you’re a government employee and you’re a Republican, where is your money going in terms of political support.
Your labor union dues are going to the labor union. And how that money is spent is not determined by you. It’s determined by the people who are run the unions. And virtually 100 percent of all government employee union does go to the Democrat Party.
Virtually 100 percent. $10 billion dollars every two-year election cycle. When they claim that the NRA is giving $50 million, think about $50 million as a percentage of $10 billion in perspective.
Henry: That’s right. It puts it into perspective.
Carmichael: Truly, it’s truly nothing. And in our media, the people who report the news are highly, highly paid. And they get to keep their jobs if they tell people what they’re told to tell people. And so Democrats can do literally whatever they want to.
Let me just give you an example. There is a son of a very, very powerful Democrat who had absolutely no experience with art, and yet his paintings, which he creates by blowing paint through a straw, sell for half a million dollars.
Henry: Wow. I’m in the wrong industry.
Carmichael: His name is Hunter Biden and they sell to people all over the world. They sell to people in Communist China. They sell to people in the Middle East. Perhaps they sell to billionaires who have investments in green energy and who want billions of dollars of tax credits.
This is well known to the people in the media. Do they report it? No. Because if they did, they would lose their jobs. And if you’re overpaid compared to what you could do otherwise in life, then you’re going to do what you’re told.
So our media do what they’re told. Now a real good example of somebody who did something that was a bit of a surprise. And I’m not also claiming that I follow this lady very much. And in fact, I’m blanking even on her name. And that is the pop star.
Henry: Nicki Minaj.
Carmichael: Nicki Minaj. Yes. She has now come out incredibly strong in favor of free speech. And by the way, she’s done it in a very, very persuasive way. And they don’t know what to do about that.
The left does not know what to do about that, because she has 22 million followers who don’t get that message from all of the places that they get it. And by the way, Twitter is controlled by the left because the billionaires who control Twitter get tremendous tax benefits from the Democrat policies.
Facebook is the same way. Warren Buffett was the first to do it many years ago. He said he should pay more taxes. And what was Obama’s reaction to Warren Buffett saying he should pay more taxes?
He started calling Warren Buffet his friend. (Henry chuckles) So what did that do? It insulated Warren Buffett from a tax by the left. Now, how does Warren Buffett make his money? How does Warren Buffett’s wealth increase?
It increases through the increase in the assets that he owns. Not the money he earns. If Warren Buffett wanted to, and this is true with any of the multi-billionaires, wants to live literally like a king and pay no tax here’s all that Warren Buffett has to do.
He has to sell a billion dollars worth of his stock and give a billion dollars to the charity, the foundation that he controls. Then he gets a billion-dollar tax deduction in the same year that he generates a billion dollars in cash.
And now he has a foundation to support whatever causes that he needs to support so that the government doesn’t start taxing unrealized gains.
And that’s the game that they all play. And the media lets them get away with it because the media is part of the billionaire elite class. They may not be billionaires, but they’re part of the class.
Henry: Let me ask this then. Has the train left the station? Are we too far gone? Is there any getting some of this stuff back? Do we need to look for something entirely different, revolutionary, in a sense, or where are we?
Carmichael: Well, that’s a great question. I don’t know the answer. But I look at Texas, for example, having passed the law that does two things regarding abortion. One is it makes abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
And the second thing is it gives enforcement of that law not to the government but to the citizens, by suing and giving the citizens the right to sue.
And by the way, the left very badly says, wants, and maintains and it may even be a law in some states, that if a police officer does something wrong as a police officer, that they can be personally sued. I think if a police officer does something that’s really bad, frankly, I think they ought to be sued.
But then the question is if schools do a terrible job of teaching students, especially lower-income Black and Hispanic students, should school boards be suable personally or should principals be suable? Should teachers be suable?
One of the big problems we have in this country is in addition to having a divide in terms of whether you’re part of the government or not part of the government, is whether or not you are educated enough to be prosperous or financially independent in a world that requires better education.
And our government-run school educational systems are going backward. But that’s on purpose. That’s on purpose because the most powerful union in the country is the teachers’ union.
The second most powerful union in the country or the postal employees. What two unions do Biden mandates on vaccines don’t apply to? Oh! The teachers’ unions and the postal unions. Who would have thought?
Henry: Meanwhile we have the Biden administration trying to continually push this thing called the ProAct. And to lend credence to what Crom is saying here.
Carmichael: Explain the PRO Act.
Henry: The PRO Act is essentially forced unionization across the United States. It will nullify the right to work states overnight. I just finished reading this book by guiding Michael Lind.
It’s called the New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. And in this book, he discusses how, like in Europe and North America, there’s the sort of populist revolts that have shattered party structures.
And there’s a pushback against technocratic neoliberalism and a squeezing in a consolidation of power. And his solution to all of this is something he calls Democratic pluralism. It sounds nice and flowery and fancy and wonderful.
It’s an idea to push the power back to the people. But what he says Democratic pluralism is, is forced unionization all across the United States for every single industry.
This is not just a mere theory anymore. Just like Crom is saying, they are starting to attach legislation to the high-level think tank stuff that people have been theorizing for a while. There is real-life action on this. We’ll have more of this and more of Crom and Ben right after this break.
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Photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.
Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) to the newsmaker line to discuss China’s illicit global behavior, SEC regulations, the Biden family, and reconciliation.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by our friend, the United States junior senator from Tennessee, Bill Hagerty. Good morning, Senator Hagerty.
Hagerty: Good morning. Great to be back with you.
Leahy: Senator Hagerty, China is on my mind this morning, and I’m thinking it’s on your mind as well. What’s going on with China? You’ve been making some news in that area of late.
Hagerty: China persists in its malign behavior all around the world. And if you think about what we’re dealing with now in any aspect of the news, whether it’s the coronavirus pandemic that they unquestionably unleashed on the planet, their reluctance to do anything, to cooperate, to help us deal with that.
Their actions in the Taiwan Strait, which threaten yet another free nation and one of our allies, where we are spending a great deal of time and effort right now. Certainly in my office contemplating our approach and our push back on that.
To what they’re doing in the realm of military diplomacy and every other aspect of global life to try to undercut and project themselves and very often at the expense of America.
Leahy: You were quoted in a story yesterday at CNBC. This is an area of great interest to me, and I learned something about your position in the Senate, where you are influential. You are a member of the Banking Committee, which is a very influential committee.
Here’s the headline of the story. SEC Officials Says US Listed Chinese Companies Must Disclose Government Interference Risk. And your quote on that topic was, I think on point. You said, “U.S. regulators must ensure that American investors and workers are protected from the sort of non-market behavior that is leaving American investors.” That’s what you said.
Hagerty: Yes.
Leahy: You said it on the Senate banking committee. How are the Chinese companies that are listed on American stock exchanges engaging in nonmarket behavior?
Hagerty: Several days ago, I made those remarks because I witnessed what happened with the listing of the major ride-hailing company. It’s a copycat of Uber here in America. It’s called DiDi. And they came and use the New York Stock Exchange to list their company.
I’ve spent a lot of time and a big portion of my life in the financial markets – a servant on the board of directors of New York Stock Exchange-listed companies. I know the rules. DiDi lists here in America raise billions of dollars.
And just a couple of days later, the Chinese Communist Party basically pulled down their data, pulls their app offline, and destroys the business model. This is after they’ve collected again billions of dollars of American investors’ hard-earned money.
Leahy: Where did that money go?
Hagerty: It’s in the hands of a Chinese company and perhaps in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
Leahy: How do we let that happen?
Hagerty: We allowed them to list. And again, I put a lot of pressure on the SEC. You cannot allow these Chinese companies to list and not follow precisely the same set of rules. The companies that I’ve worked with, that I’ve sat on the boards on, and that I’ve invested in – that you invest in, American companies have followed the rules.
If we had an American company that didn’t list a major risk like this, they would be delisted.
Instead, we had this happen with the Chinese company and we’ve got to step up. No more looking the other way. The Biden administration seems too often willing to appease and not step up and stand up for the rights of Americans.
Leahy: What sort of concrete, specific actions can be undertaken by the United States government to make sure that these kinds of market irregularities, this disruption, this perversion of our American financial markets by the Chinese, to their benefit, don’t occur again?
Hagerty: We need to make certain that they fully comply with all of the accounting standards that American companies have to comply with.
I think it’s a shock to many American investors to learn that Chinese companies have been given waivers on the American stock exchanges when they don’t comply with the same sort of accounting requirements, the same accounting standards that we do. That’s got to come to an end.
Leahy: But didn’t the Biden administration just double down on granting those waivers? Or do I have that wrong?
Hagerty: They have got to come back and look at the law and enforce it as written. And they’re not doing this time and time again. They’re looking the other way. They’re not enforcing the laws that are on the books against companies that don’t and countries –
And certainly, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have our best interests at heart. Yet they’re willing to double down on American companies all day long. We are the enemy. The economy here in America is under attack on a daily basis by the Biden administration.
Yet, if you look at their appeasement around the world and it’s not just China, they’re trying to appease Iran. They killed the Keystone XL pipeline. What a gift to China and Iran. They are collapsing our southern border. That’s a gift to the cartels down in Mexico.
And Vladimir Putin is laughing all the way to the bank now that they granted him a license to go ahead and complete Nord Stream too. Again, great for the old business over there in Russia while they’re trying to kill the old gas business here in America.
Leahy: There’s a principle of philosophy called Ockham’s razor and that is basically the most likely explanation for an occurrence – is probably the correct one. So I look at this, Senator Hagerty and I look at the Biden Justice Department refusing to prosecute a couple of Chinese spies and military members who lied about their resumes to get influential jobs with American universities.
They’ve decided they’re not going to prosecute them. To me that says this is an example of how compromised Joe Biden and the Biden administration are on the issue of China. What have I got wrong there?
Hagerty: I think you’ve got it right. And if you think about the close financial ties that the Biden family has with China. We don’t have to go back very far to remember who the big guy is and Hunter’s activities in China bringing – what was it?
A billion and a half dollars back from a trip that Hunter took when his father was the vice president. There is obviously something going on here, and we’ve got to continue to press to get to the bottom of it.
Leahy: What are the odds that an anonymous Chinese Communist Party member is going to spend half a million dollars to buy the supposed artwork of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden? (Chuckles)
Hagerty: This is yet another example of the Biden regime and the Biden family operation cashing in on the father’s position. And this is wholly un-American and something I think the world should be very concerned about.
I should say America should be very concerned about it. The world is looking at this and perhaps a low-cost entry point to influence here in America. And it’s un-American as it can be.
Leahy: You’ve got a very busy schedule yourself, and we really appreciate you coming to the program to tell us what you’re up to. What are your priorities for the next week? What are some of the most important things you’ll be doing?
Hagerty: We are trying to make it clear to the public the inflationary implications of what Biden and the Democrats are talking about with this massive spending spree that they have in the tank. They’re saying it’s a $3.5 trillion package to go alongside this “bipartisan” infrastructure deal.
All the projections that I’ve seen say that the $3.5 trillion partisan package, and again, they’re planning to pass this on a 50 vote margin in the Senate. We have a 50/50 Senate and the only way they can break the ties is by bringing the vice president to do it.
That’s their plan. The $3.5 trillion actually maps out to be more than $5 trillion. This is at a time when inflation has taken off. If you look at the numbers between May and June of this year and you annualize the inflation just between those last two months, it annualizes to a 12 percent annual inflation rate. The target for the Fed is two percent.
They’ve talked about maybe slightly overshooting that. This isn’t a slight overshoot. This is a massive overshoot. And we’ve got to step back and say, do we want to introduce this type of inflation throughout the economy?
Those of us that are old enough to remember the Jimmy Carter years know where this will lead. And we are pushing back as hard as we possibly can on this.
Leahy: Here’s a question for you. The Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for advice from the parliamentarian on the capability of using reconciliation to jam through all sorts of bills – illegal immigration, et cetera – under the guise of reconciliation.
The parliamentarian said, well, maybe once you can do it, maybe twice. Do you think the parliamentarian is going to rule on these attempts that will constrain the use of reconciliation? Or will it be a free for all?
Hagerty: We’ll see what they put in. But my guess is that even though Chuck Schumer may know things will not pass the test to be included in this reconciliation bill. And again, I want to clarify the word reconciliation.
What you would think and what I would think is reconciliation is some sort of coming together, some meeting of minds to address or fix something. This is not reconciliation. This is a 100-percent partisan, reckless spending spree that they’re on. Will they use this process to message, will they put things in that won’t fit and rely on the parliamentarian to take them out? I wouldn’t put it past them at all.
They’ll probably use anything that the parliamentarian takes out yet again as their argument to do away with the filibuster and turn this Senate process that over the years has been historically a bipartisan organization into something that is completely partisan again. And if they destroy the filibuster they’ll be able to fulfill the rest of their socialist wishlist.
Leahy: Senator Bill Hagerty, thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to our listeners here. I really appreciate it. I hope you have a great week. Thanks for joining us.
Hagerty: Thank you. Good to be with you.
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Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 The Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmaker line to talk about Schumer’s rush to pass a blank infrastructure bill while coaxing Republicans to get on board.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by the very best Washington correspondent in the country. He represents The Star News Network, covering Washington, Neil McCabe. Neil, good morning.
McCabe: Good morning, Michael. Very good to be with you.
Leahy: So I think you called it. Now, Chuck Schumer has a bill. He’s calling it the infrastructure bill. Apparently, it is a blank sheet of paper.
And it’s $3.5 trillion of spending, something like that. What are the chances of that moving through the United States Senate or the rest of Congress?
McCabe: Well, it’s a very interesting gambit. Schumer is forcing senators to be working in Washington when they don’t want to be in Washington during the summer.
Frankly, no one wants to be in Washington during the summer. It was practically designed by the founders who knew when they put Washington in a swamp, the point was to keep people away because nobody would want to be there.
Roy Blunt, who is one of the 10 most rebellious of the senators working with Democrats on this infrastructure bill from Missouri, basically said that he doubts that this thing is going to move forward because the bill hasn’t been written, as you said.
Schumer is trying to get these Republicans who are negotiating with Democrats on an infrastructure bill to be on the record, moving it forward as a way of showing their good faith.
So why should we negotiate with you if you won’t move the bill forward? So McConnell at the luncheon that the Republicans have every week urged his colleagues to vote against it. And we’re going to set to see, I doubt that the Republicans are going to go against McConnell on this.
There’s a lot of pressure – both Republicans and Democrats – to basically hold the party line. If it’s a procedural vote. When it comes down to issues of agenda or policy, there’s a little bit more play there.
But you’re really supposed to maintain party discipline on a procedural vote, and that’s what the filibuster is. And I would also say that President Donald J. Trump has been really negative about McConnell lately.
And I think that actually strengthens McConnell’s hand inside the Republican Senate conference because the Republicans are going to want to show some unity and sort of support McConnell. McConnell’s name might be trash outside of Capitol Hill, but among senators, they’re routing to him.
Leahy: That’s a very interesting point. Now, these 10 I don’t know. You call them the weak-kneed Republicans who are trying to, “negotiate with a blank piece of paper” that had been presented to them by Chuck Schumer.
I know Blunt is not up for reelection. He said he’s retiring. Are any of the others going to face primary challenges on the Republican side if they partner with the Democrats?
McCabe: Well, that’s going to be a problem. It will also hurt their turnout – will also hurt their fundraising. So even if they don’t get a primary challenge, it’s not going to be the same enthusiasm.
But a guy like Blunt retiring, Portman’s retiring, Toomey’s retiring. Bird is retiring from North Carolina. When these guys are retiring, that’s almost when they’re the most dangerous, because not only are they trying to set themselves up for retirement, but now they’ve got dozens of aides and a lot of their senior aides.
And they got to set these guys up with lobbying gigs and whatnot. So there are different provisions hitting in these bills that their staffers are the experts on lobbying on.
And so that’s why the lame-duck session is so dangerous. So these guys are on their way out the door and they’re plotting their retirement and the retirement of their aides. So that’s their incentive.
Carmichael: Neil, let me ask you a question, though. In order for Schumer to be successful in the vote, he needs to get to 60 total, which means that 10 Republicans would have to side with the Democrats against the wishes of McConnell. And I think the likelihood of that is one in a billion.
McCabe: Well, the other problem is that everyone understands that this is both. After the filibuster, Schumer doesn’t need the Republicans anymore, because then the bill just needs a simple majority.
And then, of course, it goes to reconciliation. The Republicans will only have leverage before the filibuster. And that’s why Schumer is trying to get it out of the way.
And Schumer is racing against time. It’s like the legislative season is over, and he’s trying to get something done when everybody wants to be back home and time is running out. As time goes on, the Democrats are losing their grip on Capitol Hill because everyone knows the midterm is coming, and they know that Biden isn’t going to be able to bail them out.
I mean, you see what’s going on with inflation? There’s going to possibly be a six percent increase in Social Security. Forget the budget ramifications of that.
But that is confirmation that there is serious inflation out there. That’s the highest increase, I think, since like, 1975 or something. It’s crazy.
And people are talking about lumber and gas prices. But when you see a Social Security hike of six percent, that gets people’s attention, and people are going to start saying, wow, what’s going on with this Biden administration?
Certainly, he’s losing on crime. He’s losing on the border. And he’s kind of bouncing around. People are trying to say, well, what’s going on with this guy?
Carmichael: What time frame do we look at here? In other words, you’re going to have this vote or you’re not going to have this vote. What’s the drop-dead date for Schumer?
McCabe: Schumer votes today.
Carmichael: The vote is today?
McCabe: Schumer votes today.
Carmichael: If Schumer doesn’t get to 60 today, then it’s dead the water. Is that right?
McCabe: No. What the 60 votes means, he ends the debate. And that means they can have a vote on the floor for a simple majority.
So if they don’t end the debate now, they can end the debate tomorrow. You can keep trying to break the filibuster forever. And so Schumer is just trying to do it now because he wants to get people on the record.
And he’s trying to goose the process and basically say to the Republicans who are negotiating, there are a lot of Republicans that want high-speed rail.
They want 5G. They want bridges. They want highways. They want ports dredged. So there’s a lot of Republicans who want some of these goodies.
But if they want it, they got to go ahead with the filibuster. That’s what Schumer is trying to say. Why should we negotiate with you?
Because if you don’t want to negotiate with us, we’ll just go through the reconciliation process and we don’t need you. It’ll be a smaller bill, but you won’t get anything.
Carmichael: But if they vote to do away with the filibuster without knowing what’s in the bill, then they’ve lost their leverage anyway. Is that correct?
McCabe: If they end the filibuster, they have lost all of their leverage.
Leahy: So it just makes common sense not to cooperate with Schumer if you’re one of these retiring RHINO Republicans who, as you say, are very dangerous at that time.
Of course, sometimes common sense and some Republican senators are two things that don’t always go together.
McCabe: Schumer is not in a position of strength. The reason why he’s pushing it now is that he knows that there’s atrophy to his ability to get things done. And he needs action on things.
Pelosi doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s going up against Kevin McCarthy, and she just runs circles around him. But Schumer and McConnell is a “Clash of the Titans.”
Leahy: A clash of the Senate Titans. And on that note, Neil McCabe, thanks so much for joining us.
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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 Wednesday 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 The Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the probability of an infrastructure bill passing in the Senate and the cognitive decline of “Whispering Joe.”
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by the very best Washington correspondent in the country. Our correspondent for the Star News Network, and The Tennessee Star, Neil McCabe. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Hey, good morning, Michael. Very good to be with you.
Leahy: Neil. Infrastructure gonna happen? Gonna not happen? Who’s up, who’s down? What’s going on in Washington? Because it looks like it’s kind of crazy there.
McCabe: The reconciliation law or rule says that once every fiscal year, a bill can get through the Senate that is privileged from the filibuster. So with a flat 51 simple majority, you can get one bill through a year.
That’s the only legislation that is privileged from the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes in order to force a voter and debate. And this is because that’s supposed to be used for the budget.
But reconciliation has been used in the past. It was used to pass the 2017 tax bill lifetimes in a fiscal year no budget gets passed because there aren’t even 51 votes to get a budget through.
And that’s when we have these continuing resolutions. And so what the Democrats are going to do is they were going to take their whole Christmas tree list, and they’re basically going to take the whole Green New Deal and infrastructure and minimum wage and everything and put it into the reconciliation bill, calling it the budget for the fiscal year 2022.
And the Senate parliamentarian said, actually, no, you can’t do all of that. You can’t put minimum wage in the budget. And so that’s why the Democrats were forced to cut a deal with the Republicans.
And that’s why it’s Senate Republicans who are doing it because it’s the Senate where the action is. You need 10 Republicans to join the 50 Democrats to override and get past the filibuster.
And so Democrats went to the Republicans and said, what can we agree on of the stuff that we can’t do by ourselves? Anything that the parliamentarian will allow to go to reconciliation the Democrats don’t need the Republicans.
So, in effect, what these 10 Republicans have done, is they’ve said, okay, everything that you can get through reconciliation, we’re going to give you. And then the final twist of this is that the Republicans were pretending that if we give them this, they won’t use reconciliation for everything else.
And of course, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and President Biden were saying, well, that’s ridiculous. We’re going to get it all. And then these Republicans were saying, I thought if we gave you all of these trees, you wouldn’t get the other trees.
And that’s why Lindsey Graham was saying, hey, I’m for bipartisanship, but I’m not for a suicide mission. But then you get guys like Portman from Ohio who’s saying, hey, let’s give it to them all anyway.
And guys like Romney who say, hey let’s give it to them anyway. And that’s basically where we’re at. If they get 10 Republicans, they can get it through the filibuster. If they get nine Republicans, then it fails.
Leahy: Are they going to get 10?
McCabe: No.
Carmichael: Nothing of any true substance will pass when we get around to the fall it’ll be a continuing resolution?
McCabe: They will pass the reconciliation bill and they will cram as much into it as the Senate parliamentarian will allow. But it won’t have all of the Christmas ornaments, like $15 minimum wage, statehood for Puerto Rico, Green New Deal, and stuff like that are just not going to be a part of it. And then Republicans just have to take their lumps.
Carmichael: What about a large tax? Will there be a large tax increase that 50 Democrats will sign on to?
McCabe: You can increase some taxes. But in the past, the parliamentarian has said that you can’t disguise a tax bill as reconciliation, which is what happened with the 2017 bill, which is why the 2017 bill was, relatively speaking, revenue-neutral.
President Trump proclaimed the largest tax cut in history, but that’s a function of inflation. It was somewhere around the eighth or 10th largest tax cut in history. It was really just reshuffling the lawn chairs.
Carmichael: So let me try to be more specific. Will raising the capital gains tax to ordinary income, will that pass?
McCabe: They can get something through.
Carmichael: I’m asking, well, 50 Democrats sign on to a large increase in the capital gains tax?
McCabe: Yes. But it all depends on how the Congressional Budget Office scores the actual proposal. And then the parliamentarian has to decide if that is too big. The parliamentarians in the past said you cannot make you cannot make extreme changes in the tax bill and disguise it or cloak it with the budget reconciliation process.
You can trim these rates. You could raise these rates, but will they change the deductibility of state and local taxes? No, that’s dead in the water. Will they change the estate tax or the death tax? Probably not.
That’s probably dead in the water. Capital gains? There’s not a big constituency for what capital gains should be higher or lower. I mean, there is Wall Street. But most Americans don’t really get upset. They don’t march in the streets over capital gains.
Carmichael: I was just trying to figure out whether or not all 50 Democrats I’m not even talking about reconciliation, I’m just talking about Republicans will not vote to increase the capital gains tax to 40 percent.
No Republican will do that. And I would be personally very surprised if all 50 Democrats would agree to do that, setting aside the question of reconciliation and just whether or not they could. Because that is a massive increase in the capital gains tax.
McCabe: There’s no problem there. There’s no anti-tax Senate Democrat that is not going join Schumer on this. Right now their slim majority is such that they’re exhibiting tremendous party discipline, and no one is going to cross Chuck Schumer.
Leahy: Last question for you. What is the buzz in Washington, D.C. about the declining cognitive skills of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Joe Biden.
McCabe: Well, the commander chief was whispering again and that’s got people really scratching their heads because he’s acting like he’s starting to act like a weirdo. And and I think you should also consider the screw-ups going on in the New York Democratic Mayor primary with the 135 bogus ballots that were put through.
That is actually having a material effect on people thinking in Washington and across the country. It’s validating things that President Trump has been saying about the way the 2020 election was handled.
Leahy: Yeah, I think we’re going to have to come up with a new nickname for the current occupant. Whispering Joe. What do you think? (Laughter) Neil McCabe, the greatest Washington correspondent of any news network out there. Thanks so much for joining us today.
McCabe: Alright, be good guys.
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.
Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 The Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to discuss the S1 ruling in the Senate, Biden’s failing agenda, and more spending despite hidden signs of inflation.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, the very best Washington correspondent in the country, Washington Correspondent for The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network, Neil McCabe. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Michael, very good to be with you, sir.
Leahy: Big news last night. S1, the Corrupt Politicians Act, or, as the Democrats call it, the For the People Act, would have nationalized all elections went down in the Senate on a filibuster vote was 50 to 50, purely partisan.
All the Democrats voted for it. All the Republicans voted against it. It didn’t reach the 60 vote threshold. That deal is done. What do you make of that, Neil McCabe?
McCabe: I think what we have to recognize is that the entire Biden program is coming to an all-stop. Let’s just go through a shortlist. You may come up with something else but think of all of the things we were worried about on January 20. D.C. statehood, Puerto Rican statehood, packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, the federal takeover of local voting prerogatives, increasing the taxability or getting rid of the cap on the tax-deductibility of local and state taxes, raising capital gains, bringing back the estate tax, and the infrastructure bill.
And we’ve got a Senate that now is taking off for two weeks. We basically have a House of Representatives that will be voting through July first. Then they’re taking a two-week break. They’ll be back from July 19 to the 30.
And then after July 30, they’ll be gone, in effect, except for sort of committee work, they will be gone from July 30th to September 20th when they will be back in town for the budget cut.
The Democrats still have the opportunity to use the reconciliation process. You’re allowed one bite of the apple and basically, you are allowed to pass a budget that is exempt from sort of the filibuster and other procedures. It’s a privileged motion because you don’t want someone to be able to stop the federal budget.
But that’s there. They have one bite of the apple and you can only do so much. And we saw that the restrictions on the reconciliation rule and why we didn’t get as big a pot from the 2017 tax bill, because that was passed through reconciliation. So that’s basically the state of play right now, Mike.
Leahy: Neil, let me ask you this question. So the legislative agenda of Joe Biden is stalled, but Crom thinks that’s a head fake. Why don’t you pose your question to Neil about that?
Carmichael: Neil, the administrative state is forcing many of the issues forward that the hard left would like to see pass in legislation. They’re doing it through the administrative state.
For example, when the Secretary of Defense, often unilaterally just came out and said that the Court of Military Justice and that whole procedure will now not apply to cases of sexual harassment in the military that will move over to the Department of Justice and out of the purview of the military.
He did that on his own with a stroke of a pen. There are corporations all across this country, I mean, thousands of corporations that are being forced to have sessions where white employees are being shamed by Black employees.
These are meetings and Zoom calls where Black employees are actually encouraged to tell white employees how terrible they are as people under critical race theory. And that’s going on because it’s being forced on companies and banks.
And the FDIC is using its power to tell banks who to lend money to, who not to lend money to, and under the threat of having bank examiners race in and wreck the banks.
Leahy: So what do you think about that, Neil?
McCabe: Well, listen, the great Andrew Breitbart said that the media is more powerful than the government, and the media is controlled by the left. And the media has created that permissive environment where all of these things can happen.
And that is true. And, yes, the president has enormous power to do things administratively. And Biden has a unified administration. He doesn’t have what we had for the previous four years which is Donald Trump and a bunch of establishment Republicans.
Because Trump tried to run a coalition government with the Republican establishment, and the Republican establishment basically blocked him at every turn. All of the leaks coming out of the Trump White House were about how bad Trump is.
Whereas, like I said last week, all the leaks coming out of the Biden White House are factions, one faction versus another faction. But nobody’s saying we are defending America from this crazy President.
Which is what Trump’s own people were saying. I would say the vast majority of Trump’s staff was working against him. And so he was not able to exercise that extreme power that he has as the executive.
In the next midterm, the Republicans take back the House, and the Republicans probably pick up three Senate seats and things change. And when you control the House and the Senate, you can then restrict the presidency and the administrative state.
And I like what Senator Inslee said. He said hey, instead of making a one-term President will make him a half-term President. And I think that’s basically the mindset. But, you know, it’s up to the Republicans.
Basically, if McCarthy flipped five Democrats will become Republicans today, he would be the Speaker of the House today. He does not act like a guy who is within five seats of becoming the third most powerful person in the government. And that’s the problem. He’s trying to run out the clock. He’s got three and half years to go.
Carmichael: Let me ask you a quick question. When we get to September, will we have a giant budget that passes or we have a continuing resolution?
McCabe: They’re going to have continuing resolutions. And it’s going to stop and start from, say, the end of September to Columbus Day from Columbus Day of Veterans Day from Veterans Day to Thanksgiving.
And then they’ll sort of careening into the end of the year. And when all of these Congressmen and senators have to go home and they start to whiff the jet fumes from Reagan Airport, they’ll just pass whatever they have to pass to get out of town.
Leahy: Yeah, it’s the get out of town and pass whatever is in front of me by Congress. Go ahead.
Carmichael: I guess what I’m asking is Biden’s got a 6 trillion dollar budget that he’s put in front of the House. Will a 6 trillion dollar budget eventually pass in December?
McCabe: The Democrats and the Republicans will write a 6 trillion dollar budget. And there may be something of Biden’s priorities in there but it’s just going to be a continuation of the same.
And they’re going to pile on because there is a permissive environment for spending right now. And you’re going to see this empire strikes back on inflation is incredible. Read all the articles telling you that inflation is not a problem.
And it’s like a lot of people in Washington know that inflation is a problem. Let’s just get one more budget in before people figure it out.
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.
