Live from Music Row Thursday 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 recovering journalist Clint Brewer in the studio to predict that Republican candidates will have somewhere between a heavy trickle and a wave in the upcoming midterm elections for both the House and the Senate.
Leahy: In the studio, all-star panelist, recovering journalist Clint Brewer. Clint, it’s time. This is it. It’s time for your call. It’s your call in terms of the midterm outcomes. Do you agree with the sentiment out there that Republicans are likely to take over the House of Representatives?
Brewer: Absolutely. No, I think that’s going to happen.
Leahy: It’s totally going to happen. The question is, how big is it? Is it a red trickle, a red wave, or a red tsunami for the House?
Brewer: I don’t know what the difference between trickle and wave is.
Leahy: Trickle is you pick up less than 10 seats.
Brewer: Oh, no. Wave is you pick up 40 seats. A tsunami is you pick up 70 seats.
Brewer: I think it’s going to be somewhere between a heavy trickle and a wave. I think it will be somewhere between 30, 40.
Leahy: A heavy trickle and a wave.
Brewer: But let me just preface this by saying when I was in the media, I completely stopped predicting elections because I’m terrible at it. (Laughs)
Leahy: That’s a very good point. It’s a losing proposition. But I do think Republicans take the House. I do think they take it with enough of a margin to be comfortable.
Leahy: How about the Senate?
Brewer: I think they eke it out. I think it’s going to be a seat or two. I think they win. I think we win. I think it’s going to be close.
Leahy: You do?
Brewer: And I think there’s probably going to be some challenges across the country on both sides of the aisle. I don’t think we’re going to know on the Senate until December exactly where we are.
Leahy: RealClearPolitics, they do the average of polls. They have a whole slew of them out today. We’ll kind of cover those. But what they’re saying is the pickups, the Senate, they’re projecting a 54-46 Senate that Republicans hold all the seats, and they pick up Arizona’s Blake Masters, Nevada’s Adam Laxalt.
Brewer: Definitely.
Leahy: Now they’re projecting New Hampshire with Don Bolduc taking Hassan. And then dragging across the goal line in Georgia is Herschel Walker.
Brewer: That sounds about right.
Leahy: Sounds about right?
Brewer: Yes.
Leahy: 54-46. And so we’re looking at Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Brewer: Who I know you have a lot of personal affection for.
Leahy: I don’t dislike him.
Brewer: But you’ve been critical.
Leahy: He’s not Newt Gingrich.
Brewer: Well, nobody’s going to be Newt Gingrich. Is Newt Gingrich still even Newt Gingrich? I’m not sure.
Leahy: That was the thought formulating in my mind, but I didn’t articulate that. We’ve got a little telepathy going on here. (Chuckles)
Brewer: That’s right. That’s right.
Leahy: That’s a good one. And then Mitch McConnell will become the majority leader.
Brewer: Absolutely right. Looking forward to that.
Leahy: Yes, we are looking forward to that. In terms of our summarizing what the world is going to look like in January of 2023, we’re going to have a Republican majority in the House.
We’re going to have a Republican majority, likely in the Senate. We’ll have Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and we’ll have Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. That’s what it’s going to look like.
Brewer: It sounds good to me.
Leahy: What’s the first thing they’re going to do?
Brewer: I don’t know about the first thing they’re going to do, but the main thing they ought to do is do what the American people want, which is to focus on the economy. We’ve got to figure out inflation.
We’ve got to get people to the point where they can buy a new home if they want to, remodel their home if they want to, or get into a first home if they want to. And we’ve got to get to the point where a trip to the grocery store isn’t so burdensome for the average working family.
Leahy: You don’t have to take out a mortgage on your house to go to the grocery store.
Brewer: Yes. Look, I think that’s what’s on people’s minds. I know there are other things. I know people who are very locked into the political system and read a lot and listen a lot.
They have diverse interests. But for the majority of Americans, this election is about the country not going in the right direction.
Leahy: Here’s the thing. I don’t know. For a couple of months, it seems like endlessly, I’ve been describing November 8th as the nadir. Nadir. The low point of our constitutional republic.
Brewer: Constantly pushing on people’s vocabulary on this show.
Leahy: Expanding vocabulary. We’re here to help expand the vocabulary of people. But what we’re going to see, I think, is because the commander in chief, the legal but not legitimate Joe Biden, will veto any good bills that come out.
What’s going to happen, I think, over the next two years is a Republican House and a Republican Senate will just stop all the stupid things that Biden is doing and there’s not going to be a lot of forward progress, but there’s going to be not quite as much damage.
Brewer: I agree. I think there’ll be a lot of regulatory items and other things that are going to be rolled back. But again, don’t forget why you’re there. Don’t forget why this election happened. Both parties are guilty of this.
They get in the midterm or they get it in a big wave and they believe that what got them there was all of these sort of insider baseball or big ideas that they had, and it’s not. It’s very simple things. And if they want to be heroes of the American people, address those very simple things.
Leahy: Will Kevin McCarthy be as disappointing a Speaker of the House in 2023 as John Boehner was in 2011?
Brewer: I don’t know. I think McCarthy’s going to have to really step up and control a new caucus that’s going to have a lot of new members. (Leahy chuckles)
Being the Speaker of the House might be the most thankless job in America, and it’s definitely one of the hardest. Those poor folks have to run so frequently so they don’t have a lot of latitudes to make decisions outside.
Leahy: People think, by the way, that being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is like a fantastic job. It is nonstop work, it seems to me.
Brewer: It’s a grind.
Leahy: And you have to have two households and you don’t see your family very much. I think it’s a very hard job.
Brewer: It’s a remarkably hard job.
Leahy: Especially for our friends who are in the minority right now. Oh, my goodness. But they are ready for the top.
Brewer: We need to remember there’s another battle between good and evil that’s going to take place very soon.
Leahy: Yes, Tennessee and Georgia.
Brewer: Yes, go Vols.
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 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’s National Political Editor Neil McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss the status of the Build Back Better bill and the fate of Nancy Pelosi.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line by the best Washington correspondent in the country and the National Political Editor for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, Neil McCabe. Good morning, Neil. How are you?
McCabe: Phenomenal, Michael. Great to be with you.
Leahy: So the bill back broker bill, it passed November 21st in the House. It’s before the Senate. The Congressional Budget Office says, oh, it’s going to cost $3 trillion extra or some big huge number. Where does that stand in the Senate, Neil?
McCabe: Yeah, I think that bill is on the morphine drip right now, and I think they’re just going to have to tell the family that it died in its sleep. I just don’t see Mitch McConnell doing what he needs to do.
And they’re going to have to break it up into some of its more popular components. But this idea that you could just basically throw everything into the salad bowl, mix it up and pass it, it’s just not going to fly between now and Christmas.
Leahy: Another failure for the Biden maladministration. Of course, they’ve been slapped down in federal court. A half a dozen federal courts have slapped down their vaccine mandates. But the good news for the Democrats, Neil, Nancy Pelosi has announced she’s going to run for reelection in San Francisco in 2022. Your thoughts. She’ll be 82.
McCabe: Well, let me talk about Pelosi for a second. I do want to point out that we’re focusing that tremendous leverage on the debt series. Every Republican senator voted against raising the debt ceiling, like yesterday.
But a week ago, the Republicans voted to basically allow it to go through without the filibuster. So they basically created procedural things so that the Democrats didn’t need their vote. Like yesterday they go ahead and pass it so that it goes through but a complete charade.
Leahy: That sounds like a Mitch McConnell’s special, right. That’s how he does things.
McCabe: The only problem is that she can’t stand Steni Hoyer who is the number two House Democrat. She will not step aside to let Steni Hoyer take over. She doesn’t want Clybourn to take over who’s the number three.
And basically, there is no successor. She’s been unable to groom a successor. So basically she has to stay on because otherwise, the whole thing will fall apart. She’s the only one.
Leahy: Now, she will run if she runs in 2022, as she says she will and she’s elected in San Francisco, which is a given. She’ll be 82 years old.
But, Neil, the probability that the Democrats lose the House is very high as we speak right now. If the Democrats lose the House of Representatives, will Nancy Pelosi stay on as minority leader in the next Congress?
McCabe: (Inaudible talk)
Leahy: We lost Neil there. Crom, let’s talk about this. I like what he said.
Carmichael: How do they break it apart, though?
Leahy: I don’t know.
Carmichael: Neil made an interesting point. But if they break it apart, then they lose the ability to lie about it. When I say that, I mean that in the truest sense of the word because they’re using 10 years of revenue to pay for 24 months of spending.
So they’re going to spend all the money in two years and then raise the money over 10 years. So if they break it up, then that tactic or that strategy becomes completely apparent. They can’t lie about it.
Leahy: Well, they can.
Carmichael: Well, no. Then it takes us 10 years to raise them. The one thing they can pass, and this is one that Trump tried to pass, but Pelosi wouldn’t let him and that is that Medicare can negotiate with Big Pharma. And that one actually makes great sense. And if they were to just simply advance that as a bill I believe that that would get bipartisan support.
Leahy: Well, you mentioned Big Pharma. I got to go with this. One of the problems that we have in the country right now is inflation, right? It’s huge. The highest it’s been in 40 years or so. And depending on the measurement, it’s from seven percent. I’ve seen others say wholesale prices are up 10 percent.
Carmichael: And if you just do rent, food, and energy, it’s close to 20 percent.
Leahy: Yeah, it’s terrible. And it’s all at the feet of the Biden maladministration.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: Because they’re spending like drunken sailors with apologies to drunken sailors because they’re more fiscally responsible than Joe Biden is. But listen to this. This was a statement made by Jen Psaki yesterday.
Our Fox News correspondent, Peter Ducey asked her, how do you explain inflation? And her answer was this, wait for it…let me give you an example of why prices are going up. Here’s one. Why are meat prices going up? Well, this is due to, wait for it…the greed of the big meat conglomerate. Big meat. Who knew?
Carmichael: Well, you had big meat and big oil. Big something else. Everything has to have big before it.
Leahy: This is the worst possible propagandize you can ever see. This is Orwellian because it is an utter rejection of our free market system that has led to economic efficiency and lower prices over two centuries of time.
But now they are trying to vilify companies that have been producing goods and services at a decent price. Prices are going up because Joe Biden and the Democrats are spending like drunken sailors.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: That’s why prices are going up, giving money away.
Carmichael: You have a whole bunch more money chasing a static, essentially amount of goods.
Leahy: But the villain and the piece, the big meat. The greedy big meat conglomerate. Who knew?
Carmichael: Bread prices are up because of big buns.
Leahy: Big buns. (Laughter)
Carmichael: Big buns.
Leahy: Or, big bacon.
Carmichael: Big bacon. Big bacon. (Laughter) Big chicken.
Leahy: Is there a more accomplished liar in the country than Jen Psaki?
Carmichael: Well, let me say this. Jen Psaki enjoys calling on Peter Ducey because she enjoys the back and forth. She thinks she’s smarter than Peter.
Leahy: Well she thinks in that back and forth that she is better. She thinks.
Carmichael: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. She thinks she’s smarter than Peter Ducey so she wants to best Fox News.
Leahy: And so obviously, when he asks about inflation and she blames the greed of the big meat conglomerate in her mind, she thinks she won that exchange.
Carmichael: She thinks she won the exchange.
Leahy: I’m all in favor of big bacon personally.
Carmichael: Yeah, I like big bacon, but it’s going to be interesting, but I want to get back to this breaking things up. If he breaks up Big Pharma, if he brings that one out, that would pass in a heartbeat.
But then the question is, if you pass that, then there’s really nothing else in it. There’s really nothing else in it that makes any sense. And if you pass the big Pharma that Medicare can negotiate, that actually doesn’t cost anything. It’ll save money.
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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 in studio to weigh in on the Senate parliamentarian’s decision not to allow immigration to pass through reconciliation and tax deductions for blue state billionaires.
Leahy: That is Senator Bernie Sanders, the Communist from Vermont. And he was hoping over the weekend that they would abuse the reconciliation process to put forth policy issues and get those approved without going through the filibuster.
Well, guess what the parliamentarian has ruled? Not going to let it happen. So that is a bit encouraging. We get into the weeds on this Crom But as it turns out, this reconciliation process is a way to avoid the filibuster in the Senate.
But you can only put content into those budget bills that are specifically budget and not policy. What the left wants to do and what Bernie Sanders wants to do is jam all these policy initiatives into the reconciliation. The parliamentarian we talked about this the other day, is the one who rules on whether or not they can do it.
Carmichael: In the Senate.
Leahy: In this instance, the parliamentarian ruled against what the left-wing wants to do. That’s a good thing. We’ll see how because they’re going to try this with everything to violate the typical regular order by which we actually make laws here in the country. So that’s a temporarily good thing. There are so many bad things going on Crom that we have to cheer those good things that happen.
Carmichael: That is certainly an important good thing. And I think there was that election bill HR1, and then the Senate bill one, and that didn’t go anywhere. And so then they did HR4. And I guess that passed the House.
And then in the Senate, they’re trying to stick that into the reconciliation process. And by the way, I’m surprised that the parliamentarian has said you can’t do immigration legislation in a reconciliation.
And I guess the historical nature of the way we’ve always handled immigration law has never been through the budget process. And so she’s saying, if I rule that you can do immigration, I’d have to rule that you can do anything.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: And so I’m guessing that the voting law, I would assume that under the same principle and all these other things that they’re trying to cram through in reconciliation if it turns out that the only the thing that is voted on is the amount of money we spend and the programs that we enact to spend all that money, and then the taxes.
And the tax rates that the House Budget Committee passed or the Finance Committee, whichever committee it is in the House, the taxes that they are trying to impose are not nearly as high as Biden has asked for. I’ve not seen whether or not the blue state billionaires are going to get their tax breaks back.
Leahy: The blue state billionaires. Now that Crom is a phrase that I rather like. Did you make that up? Blue State Billionaires.
Carmichael: If you think that’s creative, then thank you very much. You have a low bar.
Leahy: I do have a low bar.
Carmichael: That is alliteration. I call that alliteration.
Leahy: Because I’ve been writing headlines for stories now for well over a decade.
Carmichael: I would try to remember that rapidly. (Laughter)
Leahy: But anyway, I do have a low bar. I like the stuff you say, Crom. It’s interesting to me. (Laughs)
Carmichael: But under Trump, they took away the tax deduction on state income taxes from billionaires in the blue states and from every state. But it primarily affects the billionaires in the blue states. And Schumer was determined to get that back into the tax code.
Well, if you give the billionaires in the blue states, that tax break, the amount of money that you have to make up by raising taxes on non-billionaires is significant just to get back to even.
Apparently, I’ve not seen any reports but that doesn’t mean it’s not in there that the tax deduction Trump took away from the truly rich is being restored. And so getting back to the taxes, the top tax rate is going back to the Obama rate of almost 39.6 percent.
The corporate income tax is going up to I think it’s 26 or 28 percent. Capital gains taxes and taxes on interest and dividends are going up to about the 28 percent range.
Biden, on the other hand, wanted capital gains to go to ordinary income taxes and include the 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on capital gains. Which is rare but its still there.
Leahy: For those of you who only think of taxes in the days immediately preceding April 15th, capital gains are for investments. You make an investment in a company. And typically at some point, you may either sell it and make a profit or make a loss.
But if you make a profit, that is income that is different from ordinary income where you work at a job. Ordinary income that the highest tax rates can go up to a pretty high.
Carmichael: Under Biden, they want to raise the ordinary income tax rate to 39.6 percent.
Leahy: What’s the highest right now? 35 percent.
Carmichael: 35 percent.
Leahy: But capital gains tax on money you invest and then turns into a profit is 23 percent right now?
Carmichael: It’s 23 percent. But let me say this. I think that in revisiting the tax code, the unrealized gains on multi-billionaires need to be reexamined. (Leahy laughs) I’m just saying because they don’t pay any income tax.
Leahy: Yes. And so when you say unrealized gains, what you mean is if you make an investment in something…
Carmichael: These are the people who start the company. They don’t make an investment. They make a tiny investment. Bezos for example is worth a couple of hundred billion dollars. His investment would’ve been less than $100,000.
Leahy: Because of the way you set up a start-up company and the entrepreneurs get more.
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.
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.
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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