Live from Music Row Monday 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. (R-TN-07), Rep. Mark Green, to the newsmaker line to discuss Biden’s no show at annual Army-Navy football game, the destruction of tornadoes in Tennessee, and the Democrats quest for authoritarianism.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, our good friend, Representative Mark Green, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, served in combat in Iraq and decorated. H also left the army, was a major, I think when he left the army. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report, Congressman Green.
Green: Hey! Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: Did you watch the Army-Navy game? Who won that game? Oh, that would be Navy. 17 to 13. What was your reaction to that?
Green: (Chuckles) Well, I think the Navy wanted it more. I think the Army went in a little too confident. They had a great season so far. And, of course, we had a few of our better players on injured reserve, but we just didn’t look like we wanted it. And Navy did.
Leahy: What’s it like being a cadet going to the Army-Navy game?
Green: Oh, it’s pretty amazing. Of course, you’ve got always in the background the life of being a cadet. So it’s sort of like you’re out of prison for four hours or five hours for the weekend. And you’re there in Philadelphia most of the time. In all my years at West Point, except for one when we went out to Anaheim. But, yeah, it’s a great game. A great American tradition.
Leahy: Well, I noticed that the current President, Joe Biden, broke with tradition. Former President Donald Trump went to every single Army-Navy game.
Joe Biden didn’t go. I don’t know. I mean, if I were a cadet or a Midshipman, I don’t think I would be very pleased with that. What’s your reaction to Biden’s not showing up?
Green: I really don’t know. I didn’t give it much thought. The only thing when I think about Joe Biden, I think about the destruction to the country. I don’t think about whether he goes to the football game or not. But it is a little bit of a slap in the face I suppose.
Leahy: One of your colleagues, Lee Zeldin from New York. I’ll just throw this out there. Said the reason the White House staff didn’t want him to go there was because they were afraid the crowd would break out in chance of Let’s Go Brandon!
Green: I don’t doubt that there’s a reason why Kamala Harris doesn’t go to the border, even though she’s the border czar. It’s because the cameras go there and they see things they don’t want to see. So in that case, they would hear things they don’t want to hear.
Leahy: Well, parts of your district had very, very I think it was parts of your district were affected by these tornadoes late Friday night, early Saturday morning. What’s the status? What can you report on that?
Green: Well, obviously, just like the floods in Waverley, just like the floods in Hardin County. I mean, Tennessee and rally to each other. People are all over the district helping those who’ve lost property damage and things like that.
Our district fared better than David Kustoff’s district. The tornado actually started out there in West Tennessee. The big tornado that ripped through Kentucky. And of course, the images from Kentucky are just grieving everyone.
Leahy: I want to follow up on another question. I call this Build Back Broker bill. What’s the status of that bill?
Green: So it looks like the Senate is going to hold it. I mean, so far Manchin has done what he said he was going to do and pushed back. Now, both he and Kyrsten Sinema have said that they aren’t supportive of the bill.
And I think after Virginia, both of those folks saw what happened there and realized this kind of woke craziness that’s going on and I would even say Marxist stuff that’s going on in the far-left Democrat Party are not going to be a part of it. And they know it’s not very good for their political lifespan.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you, Mark.
Carmichael: Congressman, on the Build Back Better, his bill. Whatever you want to call it. I’m of the opinion that there are at least a half dozen other Senate Democrats that do not want it to come to the floor for a vote, but they don’t want to be vocal against the bill.
They just want it to die and never come to the floor. And among those would be Mark Kelly, Hassan in New Hampshire and the Senator from Nevada, and then also Tester who’s not up for reelection this time but still does not want to have to vote for that bill. Your comment on that?
Green: Well, I can only share what our senators say with me or say to me. And Marsha has made it very clear that there are five to six over there who definitely will not vote for it if it comes to the floor. And so that kind of confirms your suspicion. But yeah, Marsha has said that there’s more than just Manchin incentive.
Leahy: Congressman Green, I have a question on a breaking story to see if you can give us some insight into this. So the January 6th ‘select committee’ that is looking into the breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, subpoenaed Steve Bannon. He said he wouldn’t comply with the subpoena due to executive privilege.
The committee wanted to hold him in contempt. The House voted yes to hold him in contempt. And now the Justice Department is prosecuting him. Just yesterday, apparently, or Friday, the committee then also said they want to hold former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also a former congressman in contempt.
That’s going to the House for a vote. Do you think that House vote will have the same result as the recommendation to hold Bannon in contempt, or will it be different because he’s Mark Meadows?
Green: It’s very interesting. Mark Meadows was a member of the Freedom Caucus. He was a very conservative member of Congress, and Democrats liked him. It’s very interesting. He would always get extra courtesy when debated in committee beyond what others would get.
And I think it’s because he just was a very nice person and worked very diligently for compromise at times. And so I think there’ll be some Democrats who do not vote to hold Meadows in contempt. Now we’ll see. Pelosi is the master at whipping her caucus. So we’ll see.
Carmichael: Is that literally or figuratively?
Leahy: She’s got the whip. Boom! (Laughter)
Carmichael: I just want to be clear, because it could be either. (Laughs)
Leahy: When will that vote come up?
Green: That’s a hard question. So we may be voting Tuesday or Wednesday this week and that’s on passage of some budget-related stuff. But if we go for that, they’ll put the Meadows thing on. If not, it’s going to be the first week of January.
Leahy: You had a piece at the Washington Examiner. I think recently talking about the triangle of tyranny. I thought that was quite profound.
In the minute and a half we have, describe the triangle of tyranny and what reaction people have had to that piece that you wrote.
Green: Basically, if you look at the Os Guinness Freedom Triangle or Golden Triangle, where freedom is the objective to get there, you have to have a virtuous society. To get a virtuous society. You have to have a fixed moral right.
And to get faith or a fixed moral right, you have to have freedom. So there’s this circular. And I wondered, what is it that’s driving the Democrats? Not all Democrats, but at least these Marxists.
And instead of freedom, they want authoritarianism with themselves in control, dictating to everybody else. And in order to get everyone to want authoritarianism, you have to have chaos.
So when there are riots in the streets, people will even accept martial law when there are riots. So to get authoritarianism, you have to have chaos. And to get chaos, you have to have moral relativity. And you can see moral relativity and the best example, of course, is their views on abortion.
And of course, once you get moral relativity and morality is relative, the authoritarians can tell you what’s right and wrong. They can tell you what they want to say and what you can say. So that is my vision of what the leftists and the Democrats want.
Leahy: What’s been the reaction to people who have thought about that?
Green: People really go, wow, that’s pretty deep thinking.
Leahy: Something profound from a member of Congress. It rarely happens. Congratulations on getting something profound out there.
Green: I’m a reader. I love to read and to think about these kinds of things.
Leahy: We’re out of time. But thanks so much. We got so much more to talk about. Come in studio sometime, if you would please. We’ll have a full hour. All right?
Green: I will. Absolutely.
Leahy: Congressman Mark Green, always interesting to talk to you.
Carmichael: It sure is. It sure is.
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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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Commentary.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by the original all-star panelist and my good friend for more than 30 years. We met when we were teenagers, (Laughter) Crom Carmichael, the original all-star panelist. Good morning, Crom.
Carmichael: Michael. Good morning, sir.
Leahy: It is a beautiful fall day. We were talking earlier at 5:45 with Mayor Glenn Jacobs, who’s got a big fall festival going on next Tuesday in Knox County.
I would go up there if it were on a weekend just to see him and see all that kind of fun that they’re having up there. I’m looking forward to the football season. I’m looking forward to some of the games like UT playing Alabama this week. And that should be a lot of fun.
Carmichael: We hope it is. (Chuckles)
Leahy: It’ll be better than it’s been recently. It’s time now, ladies and gentlemen, people wait for this every day. It is time now for Crom’s Commentary. Crom, what do you have for us this morning?
Carmichael: Michael, we tried to talk with Neil about the $3.5 trillion deal.
Leahy: Neil McCabe, the best Washington correspondent in the country.
Carmichael: Yes, I think that thing has been deep-sixed. I don’t think there’s a chance that that will pass. But here’s what’s interesting.
Manchin is apparently sticking to his $1.5 trillion, but he’s also saying which entitlement programs will not be included. And it’s virtually all of them.
He’s willing to spend money on some very specific things. But none of it is these long-term entitlements that the Democrats are using trickery to get the amount down. Here’s how the trickery works.
Let’s say that you have a program that you want to spend $500 billion a year. Let’s say you want to spend $100 billion a year to make the math simpler. What you’re supposed to do is you’re supposed to take that $100 billion and multiply it times ten because you’re supposed to provide the amount of spending over a 10 year period.
So that would be a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money. You’re supposed to be able to fund that. The Democrats have a bunch of those types of things in their package. And the total of all of those things if you went the full 10 years is actually closer to $6 trillion.
So the Democrats have already said, well, we’re only going to run those programs for five years. And then what’s going to happen? Well, then they’ll go away. Everybody knows they won’t go away.
And so what the Democrats are doing is they’re trying to get people hooked on the heroin of government programs. And then at the end of five years, then they’ll have to renew them. Well, Manchin will not have any part of that on the other side of the Senate.
Or when I say the other side, I don’t mean really the other side, but Kyrsten Sinema has said that she will not support increases in marginal tax rates on personal income, corporate income, or capital gains. Well, enter Ron Wyden.
Now, this is an interesting article. Ron Wyden is now calling for a capital gains tax on unearned capital gains for people over a certain wealth. Now let me say this. As you and I have discussed, the multi-billionaire class is heavily Democrat.
This tax right here hits the multi-billionaires right where they live. And he has a special tax on the first one because his argument is that people like Zuckerberg and Bezos have been building these unrealized capital gains for many years.
So there will be a special one-time tax on those guys. And to me, this is going to show that the Democrats and especially Bernie Sanders don’t really really want to tax the billionaires as he likes to say.
What he really wants to do is he wants to tax the people making a million dollars. I think that what’s going on in Washington right now is a Kabuki dance that may end up in a colossal mess come December.
Leahy: As always, Crom’s Commentary, on point and very insightful. I think that’s a very interesting point. I think you’re right. I think you’re going to see Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to tax the billionaires. He wants to tax the self-made millionaires.
Listen to the second 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 Monday 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 original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the changing definition of infrastructure and the intended destruction of the middle class.
(Joe Manchin clips plays)
Leahy: (Sighs) Joe Manchin, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia. Now, that clip to me, Crom, sounds like he’s cheerleading for this 2,700-page bill. The ‘infrastructure bill’ that was just released late last night by Chuck Schumer. Forced to release it, by the way, because Breitbart got an unauthorized leak of the bill that they released about an hour before.
That’s why it got released. It’s filled with all sorts of special deals and money going to special interest groups. And yet Manchin is presenting it as everybody’s bill. What’s your reaction to that?
Carmichael: Now we’re talking specifically about the so-called physical infrastructure bill, not the human infrastructure bill. We’re talking about the one that’s the $1.2 trillion dollar bill correct?
Leahy: (Chuckles) Well Crom, it says it’s physical infrastructure.
Carmichael: I’m just talking about the other one is ridiculous.
Leahy: This one is equally ridiculous.
Carmichael: I know, but is this the one that actually includes some money for roads and bridges?
Leahy: There is some money for roads and bridges. Some.
Carmichael: Manchin is incorrect when he says a D or an R because the people from New York and the people from California are getting the lion’s share of this money. It’s – not much is coming to the people of Tennessee or any city or state in the South, including West Virginia.
West Virginia will get a little bit. And I suppose Manchin thinks that if he brings home $100 million dollars worth of bacon for West Virginia out of $1.2 trillion, then the people of West Virginia will reward him.
Leahy: He may be thinking that – yes.
Carmichael: So this is the problem, by the way. Another thing I did over the weekend, Michael, was I carefully researched every road and bridge in the continental United States and Hawaii and Alaska.
Leahy: You were busy.
Carmichael: Is actually in one of our states.
Leahy: Amazing.
Carmichael: Except for Washington, D.C., except for that little tiny area. We have a great legislature, let me say that. But even back when Democrats were in charge, even back then, there’s no way that Democrats in the Tennessee legislature could have passed a Tennessee ‘infrastructure bill’ on the backs of the taxpayers of just Tennessee, that included this type of ridiculous stuff that’s in a federal infrastructure program.
This is why historically – and I only have to go back to the 1950s when our interstate highway system was passed with a defense appropriation – our Congress did not believe that under the Constitution it had the right to actually spend money on roads or bridges. Didn’t think it even had that right.
Leahy: Had to kind of invent a right.
Carmichael: They had to invent a right by claiming that in a case of a war, we need to be able to move troops and equipment quickly around the country so we needed to have an interstate highway system to move military equipment.
Leahy: That was clever and true, but a very small part of what it’s used for. You do occasionally see some troops going through.
Carmichael: Occasionally you do. But the point is, is that once that happened, then the dam broke, and then anything goes. Now you’ve got the Democrats claiming that infrastructure is infrastructure.
Leahy: Healthcare is infrastructure.
Carmichael: Everything is infrastructure.
Leahy: When everything is infrastructure, Crom, nothing is infrastructure.
Carmichael: That’s right. There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to spend money on infrastructure. It all started where Congress did have the authority to spend money on the military. This is what happens when you start changing the definitions.
And then you get into this three-point-five or five-point-five or seven-point-five, and nobody really, really knows how much this so-called human infrastructure thing will amount to because it is an entitlement.
Leahy: That is exactly right. It’s not an infrastructure hard asset. It’s entitlement to a special privileged group.
Carmichael: No, it’s not. The group is so large that it will become impossible to sustain. Now, I want to be clear about this, because when Medicare was passed in 1960, that was an entitlement.
And they estimated that Medicare by 1988 would cost $8 billion dollars. By 1988, it was $80 billion dollars. It didn’t change the fact on whether or not it passed and whether or not it was there.
Leahy: Let me just interject you for a moment. We’re now in 2021. There are three particular things that happened between 1955 and 1965 that, in essence, have helped destroy the budget.
Number one, the highway spending bill that you just referenced under the Eisenhower administration. Number two, when John F. Kennedy allowed federal government employees to unionize,
Carmichael: He didn’t just allow it, he signed an executive order. And then, then, well, then it became legal. He legalized it with the executive order. And then Congress then passed a bill.
Leahy: And you had the Medicare. This all happened 1955 to 1965.
Carmichael: Well, 1968, because Medicare and Medicaid was great society stuff.
Leahy: No one at the time realized the import of all this.
Carmichael: That’s right. That’s right.
Leahy: And look what happened.
Carmichael: Now here’s what’s interesting. I’ll be very quick about this – in Britain, just on health care, they’re going to increase the payroll tax from 12 percent of employee pay to 13 percent of employee pay. The employer part, this is just for healthcare, is now 13.8 percent. I want to talk about the implications.
Leahy: More regulation, more crushing of small business.
Carmichael: And more taxes on the middle class.
Leahy: There you go. Crushing the middle class.
Listen to the full second 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.
Photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.
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 U.S. Rep. Mark Green, a Republican congressman representing Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District to discuss his visit at the border, AOC’s word recognition prolems, and the HR1 bill.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by our good friend, Congressman Mark Green. Congressman Green, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Green: Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Leahy: How are you holding up there? (Laughter) That’s my first question. How are you holding up in Nancy Pelosi’s crazy out of control, House of Representatives?
Green: Well, I haven’t snapped yet, but it’s enough to drive a man to it. I mean, some of the stuff that’s just being proposed is absolutely absurd. And you look at stuff that Fox News blew up from an interview from the border with me where I talked about AOC. I don’t know if you saw any of that.
Leahy: I saw that. So tell our listening audience about that.
Green: Well, she had heard people talking about the surge at the border and thought that we were calling the children coming across the border insurgents because we used the word surge. No, surge means a high volume over a short period of time.
Leahy: Did you spell it out? Congresswoman Cortez, surge means a high volume.
Green: It has nothing to do with people attempting to overgrow government. They like to throw that word around, by the way, inappropriately many times. But anyway, I digress.
Carmichael: Question for you, Mark, this is Crom. HR1 passed the House. I know you all couldn’t do anything to stop that from happening. It’s now in the Senate. What’s your prediction on what’s going to happen there?
Green: Yeah. It comes down to Joe Manchin. I’m hopeful that he bears the pressure. It’s going to be incredible on him from his own party. But he has now said that there are parts of the bill that he could support. So the Biden administration and Chuck Schumer said we’ll split the bill up. Now, that means it has to come back over to the House unless they trim down and amend out the parts that he doesn’t like and then attempt to pass that.
Carmichael: But don’t they have to break the filibuster to pass anything that’s not budget-related?
Green: They do. But if he gets a bill that he’s willing to support, then that will support doing it under reconciliation or some other mechanism.
Carmichael: How? Then the filibuster must not matter on anything if an election bill can be passed under reconciliation, then nothing can’t be passed under reconciliation.
Green: That’s basically what Schumer is saying. He said that he’s going to do this reconciliation process many more times than has been done in the past. That’s exactly what he has said.
Carmichael: Okay, well, then I guess Mitch McConnell’s only response is to tell 50 Republican senators don’t enter the chamber ever, and then he doesn’t even have a quorum. So if he doesn’t have a quorum, he can’t conduct business unless he decides to redefine a quorum.
Green: These guys are doing everything they can to rewrite rules and the laws and they totally disregard the Constitution. HR1 is unconstitutional. So I don’t think they care about that.
Leahy: I don’t think they care at all about that. That makes your job very frustrating. And then when you’re dealing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez misunderstanding words.
Carmichael: She doesn’t misunderstand it. This is what the Democrats do.
Leahy: Tell us more about how that border story blew up and the pushback against you on that Congressman Green.
Green: She was suggesting that everybody who notes the increase in the border, the surge that we’re racist. And that seems to be the mantra these days from the left. Anyone who points out, in fact, is a racist. They’re pouring across the Southern border. I’m standing there looking at 600 plus young girls in a small pod built for 33 and pointing out what’s going on because Joe Biden made ridiculous both foreign policy decisions and defense of our country, homeland security decisions that have resulted in this. This doesn’t make you a racist.
And them continually playing that racist card negates or lessens the chance that when real racism happens, we’re going to be able to spot it. And we don’t want to numb people to this word. That’s a very powerful and tragic thing when racism happens, and you should never abuse a term just for a political win. And that’s exactly what the left is doing these days. So if you’re a conservative, you’re racist and that’s inflammatory, frustrating, ridiculous. All the adjectives and you can come up with, but that’s the world we live in right now in politics.
Leahy: How can a legislative body function properly if every time the Republican Party says anything, the leadership of the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and the Big Tech all say, well, that’s racist. How can you have any serious dialogue about important issues?
Green: Thanks for bringing up the big companies. I guess I’m going to go up to the Delta counter now and say sorry, I don’t have a photo ID. I thought I could fly on your airline without a photo ID. Delta Airlines is pushing back against the Georgia law.
Leahy: A great law, by the way, a common-sense law. Voter ID to get an absentee ballot.
Green: It’s common sense. But that word is exclusive these days from certain Democrat leaders. Basically, we get up there and we message and we fight to take back the House.
Leahy: Well, I think you’re right. What are the prospects for taking back the House? We have 30 seconds left here Congressman Green.
Green: We have a tremendous opportunity here. We just need folks to help out, but we can take back the House. We are basically six seats away right now. We’ve got a special that’s coming up. We’ll win one of those, at least, maybe two. Then we’re going to need four seats. We can do that in just 19 months with everybody’s help.
Leahy: And that’s the key point. Everybody’s help.
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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.
