It's not Billy cunning in the Great American of course, though we're heading forward. Christmas can't say Christmas anymore, I hope so. And Representative Barren Davidson, who volunteered, went into the military, graduate of West Point, got in some businesses, made a boatload of money, good business leader west Point graduates, served in the military, and now he represents Central Ohio, of course, having taken the seat of Speaker of the House John Bayner about seven
or eight years ago. And Congressman Warren Davidson, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, I want to get onto the story out of the Washington Post at about forty forty members of Congress are heading for the exits. All kinds of reasons given. Mainly it's dysfunction. Can you talk about since you have a business experience, you've led a normal life, and you've been in the military US graduate of West Point, do you sense
this function in the halls of Congress? Well, look, we know it's broken. I mean that's why most people run. Now. Will admit there are some people that go there because they just want to be there, and unfortunately a fair number of them seem pretty hell bent on preserving the status quo. They don't want anything to change. Some of them are leaving because they went there to try to change things, and they're exasperated. And that's where the public is. I mean, people I talk to are just frustrated,
and like, count me with the frustrated people. I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I'm running for reelection, but there are some people that are like, oh, it's time for some fresh legs. I'm sick of this nonsense. Yeah. And when I look the when I just travel the highways and the byways, and of course I'm on the radio six days a week, there's this sense of we elect Republicans, but nothing changes. And I suppose smart money says next November, the Senate's going to become Republican.
The House maybe not so, in which case many leaders of the House want to get out before they have to work for Nancy Pelosi or a king Jeffries, which should be unbelievable. So how would you answer the cry of normal Americans who say, we elect Republicans and nothing changes. Yeah, I mean, look, that's the frustration. I mean, you know what happened this year. We passed a lot of things through the House only to have the
Senate not take them up. And even when we had control of the Senate, the rules of the Senate say you got to get sixty votes to move lots of things. So you know, the thing you run up against is getting stuff through the Senate. And you know, we've passed a lot of the things that we said we would through the House, we can't get the
Senate to take them up. And that's why the fights over spending become so critical because the one thing that can go through on fifty one votes is a budget reconciliation bill, and you know, we have to fund the government one way, shape or form. And go back to the start of the year, Joe Biden said there was going to be a clean debt limit increase. You're just going to raise the debt limit, and we said, no, we're not. We're going to get some concessions out of it. And they
weren't as big as a lot of us wanted. I mean, frankly, the public, it's not anywhere near as big as we need. But we got important concessions, like, you know, really a commitment to spend less money past two thirds of the House, two thirds of the Senate. Joe Biden signed it. And that's where you look at these crs, you know, like the one at the end of September and the one most recently passed head of November seventeenth, Speaker McCarthy on the one, Speaker Johnson on the
other. Either way, they both failed to implement what was agreed to in May, which is to cut spending, you know. So that's where people get frustrated, and they should be. So it's the system. In other words, I tell the American people almost every day we have a little bit of control of the House, just barely by. There's five or ten members that lean left. But even if you get something passed, Chuck Schumer is not going to let anything come to the floor of the Senate. So the
system is set up to maintain the status quo. And the status quo is unacceptable. So that's right. And look, that's where a lot of people are like, look, how do we dissolve the government and reform it?
I mean, look, I've never historically supported this idea of a Convention of states because it's dangerous, but the current system is failing, and I think a lot of people are like, well, maybe we do need another constitutional convention where it goes with some of the far left, crazy people that are out there. I got no idea. That's why I'm scared of that play.
What I will say is really unfortunately, I think one of the emblematic votes is this idea that we're going to continue building a brand new headquarters for the FBI in the midst of all the weaponized government. Now reality, it's not all the agents. A lot of the agent's, vast majority of them probably great people, but the leadership of the FBI has been terrible. And unless we get that reconciled, there's no way I can vote to give these
guys more or money. And unfortunately, seventy Republicans sided with all the Democrats to say, let's go ahead and do that. Let's go back a little bit to the Convention of States, because that is frightening for one reason, like you have no idea where it goes. But this is an article put in by the founding Fathers back in seventeen eighty nine that said, if I
think the numbers three fourths, you'll know the number. Say we want another convention, a constitutional convention, you start from scratch, or you could have one one article added or whatever. Explain to the American people the Convention of States and why some are advocating for that because right now we're in total dysfunction. Yeah, so a lot of times people will say the states could just simply decide that three forces of the states, let's go back to a convention.
They can limit the purpose of it, and it can only you can only consider these things or that, you know. But the realitia is when the Founding fathers got together to form the Constitution, they were really only supposed to amend the Article of Confederation, and so they basically said, yeah, these are kind of unworkable. Let's just create a new constitution and as long as three fourths of the states ratify it, you know, then it becomes
the constitution. So that's the that's the challenge. You could you could really wind up with a whole different basis for our constitution. Our constitution was created by our founding fathers who recognize that our rights come not from government but from God. And the government can't be the giver of your rights because if they can, they could be the taker away of them. Our constitution limits the
ability of the government to take away rights. Uh, but there are people that want to spin it on its head and make the government the grantor of rights, like, oh, you have a right to housing, you have a right to toilet paper. I don't know whatever else they want to have right to. But everything that that involves a gift of someone else's labor can't possibly be a right, because that would be you would be able to compel somebody else's labor. So the view of our constitution is right. But the
problem we see is the bureaucratic state. These unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, people like Fauci, people like Chris Ray, that don't get fired. They just continue on Gary Ginsler at this juris in Exchange Commission. All kinds of folks that are just running over the country and abusing the power of the office with very little accountability from the executive branch or the judiciary branch, and almost none from Congress. And the beauty of the Convention of States would be that each
state gets one vote. So that means the state of Wyoming we get the same vote as to the state of California. And so if you have three fourths of the states, I think the numbers up to thirty five or thirty six right now to call for that convention. When you do have the convention, you need thirty eight states, which is three fourths, and then each state has one vote. We wouldn't that play into the hands of conservatives because
there's more red states and blue states. Yeah, that's been the thinking, is that we've got a shot at saving the country if you get on that path. I don't know them all the way there, but I've been more receptive to it in this Congress because, look, we're just not getting things done that we need to for the American people. And you know, how, how should it take so much effort to make the Biden administration simply follow
the law? Our laws are fine. If we secured a border, the border of Trogean Stas' saying, look, we don't need more people, we don't need more money. We just need to be freed up to actually follow the law, and we could actually secure the border. They're being prevented from following the laws of our country to defend our country. And it really doesn't get more basic that than at our border. Well, that would be a
wonderful thing. And in the past I've Also, I'm just a slep radio talk show host, but I'm thinking the country right now is seriously off track. I'm looking at some polling. Of course polling is irrelevant. Legislation is what matters. But according to this, according to a poll out of the Washington Post, seventy eight of the country as a negative view of the future. One might say, who are the other twenty two percent? But when
you have three fords of the American people say we're completely off track. We have an out of control bureaucracy the FBI, etc. We have a chief executive officer who's not mentally equipped to do the job. We have laws that are not enforced by the bureaucracy because they don't want to enforce them or doesn't
fit their viewpoint of what the law should be. The country is seriously off track, and so I would hope in the future there might be an idea to call the Convention of Stage get thirty eight states to say let's do it. And if that happens, you could limit it, maybe to things such as southern border, such as reforming the entitlements, such as a thirty four trillion dollars in national debt on its way to forty trillion dollars by twenty thirty,
which is only seven years away. And the interest payments on the national debt now we are one trillion dollars plus a year, which we can't afford. And this meme is going around of this Norman Rockwell painting of a farmer standing up and saying, why should I pay taxes if we can simply print more money? And yeah, how about The writing answer to that is that if depthkits don't matter, then why tax people? Is it just because you
hate people that make money? And there are plenty of people paying taxes don't make that much, and you layer in all the layers of tax that we've got. You know, there's another one I saw going around, What is the income tax? It's a penalty for not being as bold as your forefathers. They would have never tolerated this nonsense. No, And if you look, one of the most important things is bouncing the budget. You look at everyone knows that you have to do that right and in theory, Congress knows
that, but every year they increase it. I mean, Willie, we had some of the most basic spending cuts in the world laid out there and almost every single one. You'd have anywhere from twenty to seventy Republicans crossing over with all the Democrats going, well, you know we can't cut that. Well, we can't turn this off. Well, we can't turn that off. You're going to turn something off. I mean, you've spent in two trillion dollars more than we bring in in taxes and tariffs and every other way
the government makes money. You have to turn something off. We have a spending problem. Well. I also would add that story out of the Washington Post that the FBI had forty confidential informants. These are human assets tracking the Biden family shady business deals, beginning in twenty oh nine. So they've been at this for like fifteen years of tracking Joe Biden's monetizing the vice presidency, monetizing being out of office, and then monetizing the presidency to his family's benefits.
He's spent fifty years in government, he has seaside properties all over the East Coast, and seemingly he's made normal more than no more than one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year in office with two homes before it became the president. The presidency I think pays four hundred thousand dollars a year. And so you have a FBI who's giving practological exams to the conservative organizations,
including Donald Trump. They're going after the Federalist Society, going after the NRA, and the FBI is is got his eyeshut about all the criminal misdeeds of Joe Biden at all and is not ignored. You brought up the new FBI building. Can you explain how that plays in to the control we want to have over the bureaucracies and not vice versa. Yeah, I mean they're basically building a separate campus. They the proposal is to build a separate campus that's
bigger than the Pentagon for the FBI. I mean, this is domestic enforcing the laws on our country. We just found out like the FBI was coordinating with Twitter. You know, Elon Musk bought the crime scene there at Twitter now x And we saw how the f was coordinating big tech, not just Twitter, but all the big tech companies. We just get subpoenas on Bank
of America. So we saw how the banks are turning over all your records just during the week of Thanksgiving. We saw how at and t surely others working with the federal government to log your phone calls and build the network out. This isn't tracking al Qaeda, this is tracking American citizens. I mean, they're building a police state and we're going to give them the headquarters in
the tech to further insulate themselves from accountability. The idea that you would cut them a check to do anything except to reform the place is mind blowing. And look, regardless, Donald Trump did pick Chris Ray to lead the FBI. He was supposed to give the public more confident that the FBI was there to serve the people. But it's not going. Well, how do we not fire that guy? At this point, there has to be accountability, and I think that's where people are so frustrated. And look, there are
the vast majority of Republicans in Congress want all these things. When I go talk to my constituents, I'm like, look, you know, I'm fighting for it. The good news is the majority of the Republicans in the House right now are fighting for the same kinds of things that you and I want done. Unfortunately, it's not all of us. And that's what we need.
We need enforcements and so if the people that are wanting to preserve the status quo are getting exasperated and exhausted, and we're wearing them out, or they're just aging out. They've been there for forty years. Great, let the country send us some reinforcements so we can deliver on the promises we keep making. Lastly, no, it needs done. Lastly, Congressman Warren Davidson, why not take departments of government and move them to Kansas, maybe Minnesota,
send them to Ohio, bring them to Tennessee. Why not disperse all that around the country. That was one of my first bills. Will he the drain the swampback? You know, the title comes from Trump's idea, but the idea is not new, but it's something I always love this. Look at the Pentagon's got about less than ten percent of the military there. We got trips deployed all over the planet. We could scale that back, for sure. But either way, why not have the Department of Agriculture have
lots of their employees based out here where we grow food. Yes, yes, have the Department of Interior out in the west where we own all these western lands. Maybe they'd see it's okay to cut down some dead trees in the forest instead of letting them be fueled for forest fires. They'd have people that grew up there and understand the issues, and it would cost way less
than all the money. The East coast Washington, d C. Home to some of the wealthiest counties in the country, and that's where the average guy in America feels like their paycheck's getting wrecked and it's being sent to Washington, d C. So that you can fund an elite that's totally discanted from our country. I hope we can pass the drain and swamp backed, but it
hasn't caught on yet. Well, as you said, as long as the Democrats control the center or even Republicans, you need sixty votes to do anything, and I cannot conceive of Republicans getting sixty Senate seats. I guess it's possible, but we'll see what happens. But I know there's many opportunities.
And Warren Davidson, you're like a normal person. I'm glad you're there, but keep preaching it's an honor to be there, and I just look at people do keep sending us more reinforcements, more people that are there to do the right thing, and I've seen the momentum shift in the House since I've been there, and I feel like, look keep sending us reinforcements. We are going to get this done because we have to, Congressman, no question,
we are. But we're teetering. And if we continue beginning of next year, another four to eight year run of Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris, it's done. It's over, the country's done. We'll be fifty trillion dollars. There'll be a dead crisis, in which case dollars will be worth nothing, pensions will be worth nothing, and you need to wear a barrel full of dollars to buy a loaf of bread. And we've got to stop the madness. Warren Davidson, Congressman, once again, thank you for coming on
the Bill Cunningham Show. Always an honor. Thank you, Willie. God bless you and your listeners, and God bless America, and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Bill Cunningham, the Great American Live at Showme of the Bengals, News Radio seven hundred WLW. Hey everyone, this is Maria Montgomery