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Now back here in our Washington, d C studios. I'm pleased to say Joe and I are joined by a very important guest, the former Senator from West Virginia, first, a Democrat, that an independent, Joe Manchin is here with us on balance of power. He of course also is author of Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense. Thank you so much, Senator.
For thanks for having your time with both of you, and.
We do want to get into the politics of today and your dead Center thesis here, But if we could begin with Ron, the conflict that the President pursued and that Congress, frankly, to this point has played very little role in. I wonder if you're looking at your former colleagues who had no say in the start of this war, have had no say in the conduct of this war to this point, but some are suggesting should have a say in how it ends, if this is to end in some kind of formalized treatment.
Well, first of all, in any of these conflicts, if you look back through history, even if they did not go the way we intended them to go, there always knowledge of what was going to happen. And if you had a chance you could agree, and you could agree to disagree. This had no input whatsoever or any knowledge of what was going to ear the end game, what was going to happen, And I think it's been hard
to dissect what was our main purpose. Everyone was concerned about them having nuclear arsenals and if they did, and their prolific terrorism support around the world. It was something we all should be concerned. The free world should be concerned about that. And you could have brought more people along if we could have proven that they were at this enrichment that we had to do something at that time, we could have had a multi, multi nation of Okay, how do we keep the straits open, how do we
secure free shipping? How do we make sure they do not have access to nuclear weapons? They can do harm to everybody, And we're not going to basically force a regime chain because we've never been good at that. It's
an ideology, it's not just a position. So with that being said, could we have neutralized them so they could not add that reach that they've had so with the hoodies and amas and and all their different has belong, all their different sanctions, if you will, as far as around around that part of the world, and also making sure that the Gulf States. You know, I've said, this is not going to be a gentile country, a Jewish country. They can go into the Muslim world and government that
can't do it. What they can do is help prepare the basis for a Muslim basically a regime that is more agreeable with the world order. So we've got to hope, now, how do we get out of this? But they can't return right now unless you know, you've stopped the main intent of having nuclear weapons, and that means where is the rich you know, I hope it's not another Iraq. We had wars of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, and we couldn't find its right, So we're hoping that's
not the case. And I don't they've just I mean, we thought we've newted them, if you will, But my goodness, they keep firing and they keep having missiles. And I'm understanding China has really come in strong in help and defense of our end. That's not a good sign.
But so the extent you think Congress has abdicated its duties so far, there will be another inflection point coming when we reach the sixty day mark of this conflict that'll be on April twenty ninth, and we've heard from a number of members it said, look, you know, the president's got some bandwidth here. Does the debate change at that point in the parlance of war powers, when we're sixty days into this and there might not be an end insight.
Well it should. You know, we've up until Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we paid for every wars and dedicated funds that paid for the wars that we had, so we didn't incur any more than debtedness. We saw what the Afghanistan Iraq war did to us as far as it's accumulating more debt, and now we're at thirty nine pushing forty trillion dollars. A civilized country cannot survive that because sooner or later it's going to be such a burden on the people, the citizens, that they will reject what's
going on. And when that happens, you just get total dysfunction. We're close to that, and we're an inflection point now to where okay, no one's talking about the debt. We've raised. We've increased the debt more in the last five months, faster than any history. As I'm understanding, it's over one trillion dollars. This is whenever the debt exceeds the cost of defending your country. So we're one trillion dollars. We've
passed a one trillion mark. That's greater than what we have as far as what we pay to defend the country. I know the President wants to increase that to one point five trillion dollars. That's going to be a very very heavy lift. The power of the purse is still in the House, okay, and it has to have agreement with the Senate. That's the balance you have. The Senate has the filibuster, the sixty vote threshold, which is a
wonderful thing for our country up until now. It's the only time it's not wonderful is if you're in power, if you're in the majority, you want total absolute power. So the Democrats wanted to get rid of the filibuster when they had it last twenty twenty with Joe Biden. I would not do it under any circumstances, and Christian Simon did not do it. So without us two, or without even one of us, they could not get rid
of the filibuster. Now the President wants the Republicans to get rid of it because they want a voting right, and both of them want to get rid of it because of a voting of a voting law that that's both one Deersions Save America Act. Yeah. So with that being on, I said, wait a minute, the bottom line is you're going to be flip flopping back like most European parliaments do. If you do that, we have stable government. When we pass legislation, it's going to be there for
quite some time. It's harder to get rid of it. Yeah. Two, and what happens is that we won't be that superpower with the predictability instability that the world has looked towards. And right now I'm concerned about that. Well.
And your defense of the filibuster has been well documented to this point. The Senate Majority Leader John Thune has also tried his best to defend it. Refuse the talking filibuster that President Trump asked, for example. But I wonder what you make of the notion that to get around the filibuster, we're just doing a bunch of budget reconciliation packages. Obviously, you are a critical vote for Democrats and the Biden
administration and a reconciliation package. We've seen Republicans already successfully pursue one this Congress. They're talking now about two point zero and three point oh. Was this just the way we're going to do something?
Well, this is exactly what the Democrats try to do. And I told Chuck Schumer, I said, Chuck, the establishment of the Senate is the most liberate body in the world. Okay. It was not designed to run on simple majority fifty one. It was designed to run on more of a consensus, and that means that the minority would always have input. As a senator. It didn't really make that much difference to those of us who might not be the majority
leader or in leadership, because we still had input. We could talk, our voice was important, and our vote was very important. So you always were needed to sit down and negotiate and work through things. Now they're getting to the point where they said, we'll just disregard that. And I told President Biden. I said, President, what you're doing here and allowing this to go into reconciliation coming in
with American Rescue Plan ARP is wrong. I said, you're the one on the stage as I recall running for president that said, I know how it works. I've worked with these people. I know how to bring people together. And now you're throwing a nuclear option, what we call
the nuclear option, just coming out of the gate. And I believe they would have ran the one hundred and seventeenth Congress, which is twenty twenty one through twenty January twenty twenty three, with four reconciliation bills two and twenty twenty one in two and twenty two, and I said, I'm not going to you need my vote, You're not going to get it. Not going to happen. And I killed the build back better because it was basically thrown
so much. It had been a ten trillion dollar bill, we'd have thrown the world, I believe into a recession, if not a depression. It was awful. You cannot digest that much money in the system when they did the When American Rescue Plan was passed in January of twenty twenty one, that means within one year we put five point one trillion dollars of government spending. The end of the system, we run the government about five and a half train dollars. During that period of time, we doubled
the amount of money we couldn't digest it. You talk about fraud, abuse, some waste, that's how it happens. And you see what's happening when.
We were all chasing you around every day up there, trying to get a number from you. And I mean, you really held the cards at that point, Senator, who's the Joe Manchin?
Now?
Because they're talking about two point zero and three point zero, the President's already backed one of these plans. They're talking about Save America maybe being in the next one, and everyone wants to know how many limbs we can get on this Christmas tree?
Is there a mansion or a set? I would like to I think there is. I truly believe in my heart of hearts there is. Yeah. But what they have to come to realization what's your purpose? Is it about your country or about your party? So once you get that in your mind, who do I serve? I said, I told Harry Read one time. I said, Harry, I can't vote for that. He got upset and I said, Hary, listen, you didn't hire me, and you can't fire me. And I said, I don't work for you. I don't work
for the president. I don't work for anyone here except my oath to the Constitution to protect and defend it. I took that oath and the people back home in West Virginia, and if I can't go home and explain it, I'm not voting for it. I was never afraid of getting defeated to go home because I had to live with my and I know there's enough good Republicans and enough good Democrats that feel the same way. They seem to have the courage. This might be my last hurrah.
But if I'm going to go out, I'm going out on my terms and do what's right for your country. But you know, you can be respectfully. The president has a temper. I know him pretty well, but you can work with him. Just be respectful, and said, mister President. If he gets mad and calls you dumb, stupid and ugly and everything else, just say, oh, he doesn't really mean that. He's my friend. He'll get over it. Yeah, okay, but do it respectfully, because I think he would respect
that more. Knowing that you feel very strongly about your position. The biggest thing in the political arena today. It's easy to be against something. Tell me what you would be for if we could change it help me before you, I'm against it. Have you thought about this? Would you try this? I think it might work better. I've done what you're going to do right now, and I've made
that mistake. I'm asking you not to repeat it. You know, be positive, don't be negative, don't call people names, don't say saw the Democrats fault or it's all the Republicans fault. It's all of our fault for allowing the Democrats and Republicans to mess the system up this bad.
Well, it gets back to your dead Center book and our final moment here a senator candid dead center candidate survive the primary system to have a successful run at the presidency? Would you try, sir?
I would have loved to been able to be on the stage, to be able to talk what was normal and common sense to people, how they live their lives, what's important to them, and how we treat people around the world, and how we have people that want the same quality of life the same economies that we have here in the US. That's what you prosper To be a superpower the world takes more than being just a
super military or a super economy. You have to have supercompassion for those less Fortunately, and if you don't show that, people won't follow you. We've got to change and the system, the process, whether it's a third candidate, change the process of how we elect. Open up your primaries, let more people, don't let the Democrat Republican Party control everything because they're screwing it up.
You got to love that Kaylee's still asking you whether you're going to run, right, that's the point there. Joe Manchers and us live in Washington.
Thank you, Thank you, Joe. Good to be with you only here. Thank you, thank you.