Attention. You're listening to the Todd Huff radio show, America's Home for Conservative not Bitter Talk radio. Be advised. The content of this program has been documented to prevents and even cure liberalism, and listening may cause you to lean to the right. Here's your conservative but not bitter host, Todd Huff. All right, my friends, you have tuned in to America's Home for Conservative not bitter Talk. I am your host, the one, the only,
the beloved, Todd Huff. Email Todd at todhufshow dot com. I just realized here, I got to change my configuration a little bit because I am now in the home studio. We returned back from our stint down south in Florida, where we've been since gee mid February, I think. So back up here in good old Indiana, I saw some things trending. I'm not a social media guy, but I did with the Indianapolis five hundred on Sunday
see that there were some things trending. I think, at least I saw him people complaining about this state, the state of Indiana, as far as far as what it has to offer and so forth. Anyway, it's good to be home. It's good to be here with you. If you want to join or participate in this conversation by text, you can join us as well by texting three one seven two one zero two eight three zero three one
s two zero twenty eight thirty. I want to start today by talking about this debt ceiling negotiation, this debt ceiling negotiation that has been struck up between the wine House and Speaker McCarthy, who of course is the Republican leader in the House of Representatives. We have a divided government, as you well know. The Republicans are in control of the US Senate just by a couple of
votes, but they are in control. That's why they have Speaker McCarthy as a Republican, and the Democrats control both the Senates and of course the White House as well. So this is the well I actually, candidly you know my true thoughts on this. I think the left, I think the Democrat Party actually prefers this particular setup where they have more than half of the power,
but it's divided, and it's divided in such a way. I call this the Mia Michael Scott dream, which is to get all of the credit with none of the blame, and that For those of you the watch The Office, you will remember that line. I cite it from time to time on here in the Golden Ticket episode. Sorry, I'm just picturing Michael dancing around with Whimsy in that episode. But anyway, he says, I want all of the credit, David, but none of the blame. This is
what the left effectively gets when there is divided government because what happens. What happens is Republicans are there, and Republicans can be blamed. Now, don't get me wrong, Republicans can be blamed. If there was one Republican in the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, Republicans would still be blamed for whatever was plaguing or whatever ills this great nation would have. They would
still be blamed. The media, the Democrat Party, they would find a way to do that, and a certain percentage of the American people would swallow that hook line and anchor. But of course, reality tells a different story. Reality demands that we understand context and the context and the reason of the Left is totally content with a divided government so far as they hold more than half of the power is because exactly what I said earlier. They they get
all the credit and none of the blames. So if they pushed through one of their wacky, insane, delusional ideas, they can say if went well, when not, if when it doesn't work. First of all, they will deny it, tell us we didn't have enough time to measure it, tell us we didn't really know what we were looking for to begin with.
Whatever they have to tell us. But once it's unavoidable that their policies, that their ideas, that their solutions simply have failed the American people and there's no way out of it, and they have to capitulate and say, you know what, it didn't work. They're never gonna say. They will never say mark this down. This is a fundamental truth of the universe, my friends, as as we know it. The Democrats are never going to say our ideas did not work. For starters, they don't have ideas, they
have feelings. But beyond that, their ideas will not work. But they will never take well, they will never admit that. And my friends, that's candidly a pretty what I want to say, pretty standard response from a position of human nature. Nobody likes to say I was wrong, but especially the Democrats, the Dramocrats and why why do they want to maintain that position. They maintain that position. They maintain that position because politics is nothing more
than a performance for them, and it is more troubling to them. Let this sink in as I'm thinking this through. It is more troubling for them to actually eat their words than it is to implement policies that hurt the average American family, the average American worker, the average American voter, the average American period. It is more problematic to them. Now this extent through Republicans as well, and it's not too politicians of all stripes. But the truth
is, the truth is they care more about their electability. They care more about staying in the end crowd, maintaining the correct position on an issue so that they can position themselves. It's just like office politics, my friends.
It is they want to be friends with the end crowd. They want to be critical of the people who are on the fringe and on the outside, people that they don't think are hip and cool and sophisticated and so forth, the hay seed hicks, as they would probably say, people that live in flyover country, which of course is precisely the bull's eye. It's pretty much where we live, and they don't really care. Honestly, they don't.
They just don't care. They care about their power, they care about their positions, they care about their retirement, But they don't care about balancing budgets. They don't care about cutting spending. They don't care about driving this nation deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. They simply could not care
less. In fact, this latest bill, this bill that's supposed to avert crisis, right, this bill that's supposed to avoid a government shut down in America defaulting on its debt and so forth, increases the credit limit by four trillion with the tea four trillion dollars over the next two years. Now,
they can play all sorts of games that they want to play here. They can tell us when they pass the next bill that's going to cost money for the American taxpayer, they can tell us that it doesn't really have a net increase in revenue, or meaning that they don't need more revenue to pay for the program, or whatever. They can do all these fancy shenanigans with numbers and hide the true cost from the American taxpayer, which is what they do.
In fact, recently, what don't I just Inflation Reduction Act that things can end up costing many, many billions more dollars than they originally told us. But of course it doesn't matter now. The narrative is, the headline has gone, the narrative has passed. They've already gotten their political capital out of passing that so called Inflation Reduction Act. Sign a piece of paper with people standing around clapping for the president. That's enough for many people to say,
man, he cares. He cares about making sure I can afford groceries. He cares about making sure that I can afford my gas or whatever. And the truth is, when you look at the numbers, even when they told us the numbers prior to this bill, think about this, the numbers that they told when they passed the Inflation Reduction Act said that it would have a negligible impact on inflation. In fact, the first couple of years it was going to actually into or excuse me, add to inflation, add to
it, I mean a small amount. And then they said in the remaining years it gradually shaved off a millimeter of a millimeter off of the amount of money out or excuse me, off of the amount of inflationary pressures that were facing, and effectively, at the end of ten years there was a net zero effect on inflation. But they still called the bill the Inflation Reduction Act, and they still got their political capital off of it. Same sort of
thing is happening here. The Democrats are going to get all sorts of kudos and applause for negotiating with Kevin McCarthy, negotiating with the Republicans to stave off a financial meltdown in calamity. Of course, the irony of ironies is not that this particular need to increase the death assuming the debt limit. That is not the real problem here. If we uh just didn't, If we if we were not continuing to borrow money at the rate that they say we need
to borrow money, that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the overall picture of where this this country is being taken by those who make fiscal policy, and when you look at the total not just not just whether or not we need to increase our debt our debt limit by four trillion, which is a huge number for regular for regular people, but in in DC that basically means they're adding what the deficit. Excuse me, The current debt is
thirty one trillion dollars thirty one in some change. Adding another four trillion to that is, what's it like? Maybe what's that twelve percent? Which is crazy? Right? I'm not, I'm not. I'm just ballparking the figure there. It's craziness to think that we've probably thirteen percent, But it's crazy to think that we're just blowing off I don't mean to blow off those numbers. I'm saying. It's not like they're wanting to double it. Thank goodness.
I don't put it past them, But it's still devastating those the the death by a thousand cuts comes to mind this, this concept that we continue to nick the arteries and the veins of the average American taxpayer. You put
burden upon burden upon the American taxpayer, little by little. Of course, four trillion and of itself is a massive number, But if you bread it out over a couple of years, and if you say that, hey, we're gonna make the wealthiest Americans pay for this thing, and you demonize people and you make Americans well basically resent people who have more, and you point
to that group and say they're the culprits. They're the ones that aren't paying their fair share to begin with, and all this nonsense, you stir up this frenzy, this hatred, and then you've got a built in culprit named Kevin McCarthy, who I'm not defending by any stretch of the imagination. McCarthy is out there trying to frame this as a victory. But my friends, we've not really achieved anything. We've not really achieved anything. But McCarthy's out
there bragging about this thing. House Freedom Caucus members are saying no conservative can vote for this thing, and good conscience. We've got the wine House and the left out there saying we didn't really get anything we wanted in this bill as well. I don't know if that was kind of a deal they wanted to make with McCarthy to help him sit save face behind the scenes, or what. But the bottom line is, the bottom line is what I thought
would happen, and what you thought would happen appears to be happening. It appears to be happening. There might have been a couple of tiny wins here and there for the Republicans, but the bottom line is that America is still spending itself into oblivion. To increase the government's ability to add to its debt by four trillion dollars over the next two years is beyond inexcusable. There is nothing. There is absolutely nothing unless we got well four trillion dollars in spending
cuts, I guess in exchange for that. But that's of course not what happened. House Republicans want in McCarthy to go in with a one point five trillion debt limit increase, and he's at nearly what almost three times that, not quite again in the ballpark of that. So I'm not discouraged because I know, yeah, you know, we know how the game is played, right, you know how the game is played. I know how the game is played. I know McCarthy is not a principled conservative, and I do
not mean that as an insult. He may be a personal personally a very likable guy. There's nothing to do with it for me, But you go back to when Matt Gates and Lauren Bobert and others were opposing his speakership, and this is one reason why. Now there's some other takeaways from this too that I want to get to next segment. One of those, of course,
is that realities are what they are. McCarthy can't unless he's really and truthfully prepared to shut this thing down and deal with the ramifications, which maybe he should be. I'm not saying. I'm not saying that one way or another. I'm just saying that's not going to happen. Like that just isn't going to happen. This not a realistic expectation that we should have for for McCarthy. So you know, what else could he have done at some point?
I'm not again, I'm not excusing it. I'm not saying that there couldn't be more things that were done. But ultimately, the idea, and that's why I was saying it from the beginning, the idea that we were really going to come out of this with massive spending cuts in America on a correct physical path was I think wishful thinking at best, maybe absolute delusion at worst. And that's why we said I didn't, you know, I didn't expect much to come out of this. So again, this is still new.
The text of the bill was just released. I guess it was yesterday, but it's Memorial Day weekend. That's another thing that happens. They do these things on the weekends or late at night or over the holiday weekend, and you know, the average person can't really know what's going on. And so here we are. Here we find ourselves arguably in a worse position.
I mean, we might have avoided some fiscal and financial turmoil in the near term, but what we added on the backside of it is going to be I don't honest say infinitely worse, but if you can allow me to be metaphorical, infinitely worse, because that's going to be compounding with everything else, all of the other bad fiscal decisions and all the other bad fiscal decisions this
nation hasn't even officially adopted yet. That's going to be pushed next well, next week and next month and next year and so forth, because it doesn't seem any to be any real desire to stop it. Maybe from a couple, maybe, but you're gonna have to prove it to me. This did not prove it to me. But I've gotta take a break, quick time out, my friends. When we get back, I want to talk about some of the lessons and takeaways that we should at least be reminded of or
maybe even learn through this whole process. Timeouts in order, though, my friends, sit tight, you're listening to conservative not better talk. It's going to be back here on this Tuesday, back in just a minute. Welcome back, my friends. So what are the takeaways? What are the takeaways from this negotiation between Kevin McCarthy and Biden, the Republicans and the Democrats or
dare I say the dramacrats. What are the takeaways? Well, the first one is an obvious one, and that is that the Republicans are not in control. I mentioned off of the top of the program. I think that for many strategists on the left, this is actually their preferred breakdown of government. They like have in control of the Senate, or maybe it's maybe it's even the other way. They have the House and they want the presidency. They can't stomach the idea of their being a president Donald J. Trump.
Again, Remember this is when they howl at the universe a scream whenever there's a problem, well, when there's someone there that they don't want there. This is where they request service dogs to deal with the trauma of President Trump. It'd be the same for De Santis as well, but service dogs adult coloring books, they stage cry in. This is literally the things that they did in twenty sixteen. This is not hyperbole. This is not designed to
be satire, although I wish that it was. That is not what happened in twenty sixteen. Legitimately, these are the sorts of things that happened. This is how they react when Republicans have the wine House, and I mean
for obvious reasons. I mean, the obvious reason is that the average left, well today's radical leftist, is a statist, and they like strong executive power, and having someone like Trump or someone like the Santists or someone who's not a well an avowed leftist, they don't like that, and so they can't stomach that. They can't deal with the press conferences and the tweets and all that stuff happening when Trump's in office. And so they definitely don't want
to give up the presidency. But I think, don't get me wrong, they don't necessarily want to lose the House and the Senate. But strategically I think they kind of like it. So maybe they would be okay having the House and losing the Senate. They want it close. They don't want it to be a supermajority for the Republicans, or maybe they would be happy giving up the House and having control the Senate, which is really what we have
right now, because again it allows them. When you have weak well weakness on the Republican side, or when you have moderates the Republican side, you're going to get effectively the same sorts of policies you would get if the radical left we're in complete control, not to the degree. I will grant you that there are some things that people like McCarthy are not going to go for that a group full of Democrats in Washington, DC would go for. But
they don't have any scapegoat. They don't have anyone that they can blame. They don't have a patsy to fall back on to point at. They do when there's a speaker McCarthy, and I think they like that, I really do. They get all of what they want without having to take any of the blame. I call that the Michael Scott well, the Michael Scott dream. Really, but what else can we learn from this little incident regarding the debts sailing? Well, we know that most elected republic Blicans are actually not
conservatives. I say that again, most elected Republicans are not actually conservatives. Now, when it's time to get votes, they'll get in their pickup trucks. Some of them might even put a dip in if it appeals to certain demographics. You know, they might drink a certain brand of beard. To connect, they'll you know, get the blue jeans out, they'll get the American flag out, they'll pound their chests, talk about how their their love
for this great country. And that's what that's really the purpose is to connect with people who feel that way legitimately, as I know many of you do, as I do, but they don't necessarily well, they're embarrassed. The simple way of looking at it is they are embarrassed by us. They they're around people all the time, and I mean, I seek to understand this, not just to be critical. It's going to come across as being critical
because candidly, I think it's weak. I think it's I mean, it's the sort of things Actually my children don't even think like this, but it's the sort of thing, sort of way that someone who is a juvenile or a young person would think if they're just trying to be accepted by the cool crowd. So you've got three the Democrats, and you've got the media, and you've got Hollywood celebrities, and you've got athletes. All these folks that
these organizations are are leftist today, they're at least liberal. Many of them are leftists. By the way, My favorite part I did watch part of the draft NFL draft here a month ago. Favorite part of the draft is I don't want to say the favorite part, but the part that makes me
chuckle every time, and I forget about it until happens. Roger Goodell walks out to the microphone to announce the first pick or the three hundred and eighth pick, or however far he's out there at the microphone, and the booze from the audience, the cacophony of booze that's out there as he walks to the microphone, makes me chuckle every time, because the average football fan is
not cool with the things that Roger Goodell is doing. But the average football fan, the average the average joe here in this country, you're you're out there. They are out there living their lives around other average joe's. They don't have to worry. I don't mist understand. I'm not using this to say this to excuse it. But these folks aren't worried about not getting invited to some fancy, high falutin liberal I don't know, some little party or
something. In fact, in fact, a lot of those folks do absolutely do not want to go to those things. I would include myself in that, and so, but the people in DC do, and so they're they're mocked and ridiculed for being stupid the left and the liberals. The Democrat Party is supposed to have all these answers. Of course that's patently nonsense, but
nonetheless it sticks with the narrative. The media turns up the pressure. They always ask you about Trump or Trump's tweets, and people just get embarrassed. They just get embarrassed. I've pointed out one of my senators, Todd Young here in Indiana. He is happier to tell you he's not supporting Trump than he would ever be to tell you he's not supporting Biden. And that is
really to me. All you need to know that he is one of dozens of senators in the Republican Party who act and behave like this, and I guarantee it when twenty twenty eight comes around in our state, you're gonna see the same campaign ads and the same proud to be an American and you know, talking about the traditional campaign and a sort of approach, But what happens between the six years the six years that you know, from campaign to campaign,
the only thing I hear is how he capitulates and gives in to the left. And so there's a lot of Republicans like that. Now, the average Republican voter, the rank and file Republican he is, she is a conservative, not just the Republican. So we want to talk about saving our democracy, maybe we should start finding people who represent the people that vote for these jokers a little bit better. But that's another takeaway from this. The
average elected Republican is not conservative. The average republic Looking voter is conservative. And we got to find a way to reconcile that there is a battle not
just for control of this country between Republicans and Democrats. There's a battle for control of the Republican Party, between conservatives and moderates, between constitutionalists and lovers of big government, between strong principled people and weak, accommodating, capitulating people who are only concerned, who are only concerned about again, the things that you might have been concerned about in high school, fitting in getting invited to
the party, being able to be a committee, a high ranking person on the committee or whatever, having the seats of honor, getting the appropriate amount of applause when you're out in public. Meanwhile, this country is burning all around them, and they're more concerned about appearances. They're more embarrassed with things that they've heard conservatives say. Meanwhile, they're completely completely abe Well, what's the word I would use? Not? They're completely fine with the left driving
this country knows first into the ground. It is a remarkable thing to see. It certainly is timeouts in order to my friends, sit tight. You're listening to conservative not better talk. I'm your host, the one, the only Todd Huff. Sorry about that. Just be back here in just a minute. Welcome back, my friends. A couple more takeaways from again what
we're doing. We're talking about McCarthy's negotiation over the debt ceiling agreement, and we're again, this is not not something that is good for the American people. This is not something that's good for people who care about reigning in the size and scope of government, the cost of government, and so we're talking about a few things here. Some takeaways, some takeaways. The first one is Republicans are not in control. The second one, the second one is
that Republicans elected Republicans are not many of them. Most of them are not conservatives, but most of the Republican base who actually cast votes, cast ballots for elected representatives and senators and president, they are conservatives. Some of them don't even know they're conservatives. Some of them have been taught to hate the word conservative. Some of them just like conservative ideas. They maybe call them
under under another banner. Maybe they'll say libertarian, which I'm okay with that, And I know I got libertarians that listen. You'll say, well, Todd, there's a big difference, and that's fine. You can that's fine. I don't even care. I just want those of us who believe in a limited government to understand there's a lot of us, but there's not that many people who think like us in DC for a host of reasons, which we talked about, which we talked about last segment. Another thing that I
have, and I actually jotted these downs some takeaways. I don't want to make sure I got all five of them down. There might be a few others that I've left out. Negotiations. This is the third one. Negotiations with leftists never yield what we actually need, especially when oh this is the kicker, Especially when our negotiators know that they are going to be blamed for anything that goes wrong. And and you could say, when they're negotiating from
a position of weakness, which I would maintain that as McCarthy. Look, I don't take pleasure in this. I really do. Don't. Some may think that I do. I truly don't. I don't like to I don't. I don't like to speak ill of Republicans, especially Republicans and leadership, because you know, I don't expect people to agree completely with me, though they certainly should. I thought that in them for good measure, but I
don't expect that. I understand that there are realities, you know, being a Republican in California, or a Republican in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, some places, a Republican in San Francisco, that's almost an extinct breed of individual. But they're different across the country. I understand that, and realities are what they are, and you have to be able to make you have to be able to make the majority work for you. But it's
not just the majority in the House. It's of course that's the only chamber that we have a majority in. We don't have the Senate, we don't have the White House, and so there's a major disadvantage. And so when you have someone like McCarthy, who I don't believe, actually I'm very certain that he's not a principled conservative. And before you think that, I mean that as a complete criticism. I don't because I would say Trump is not
a principled conservative. I think Trump is a common sense guy that ends up at conservative principles. But not because he's someone who's out there trying to articulate conservative ideas and the philosophy and all that. I just think he's taught, you know, talks it through, thinks it through, and ends up, however much percent of the time, nine times out of ten, eight times out of ten, at least on the conservative side. But it's not because
of the principles. It's just because of he's a practical kind of a businessman, not kind of that's what he that's who he is. And so as a result, you know, that's why he was he's a good negotiator because he's a good negotiator first and foremost, and he uses sense and things that makes sense, just listens and tries to think through the solutions. But when your starting point, say with the McCarthy is, you know, I feel
like it's more about just getting something done. That's an immediate weakness when they know that you are willing what your main priority is just to get something done instead of standing on principles. Your main priority is to get something that you can put before your chamber. When you realize that that is the starting point, it's just not going to end. Well. That's why you could predict this is why we predicted this coming pretty easily. This is just who This
is just who we are. And I don't mean it. I really don't. I know that that's can be seeing clear it is clearly it can be insulting, but I don't mean it to be that way. I'm just saying it to explain who I think McCarthy is. I think he likes, he likes the position. I think he's just Okay, Hey, I gotta figure this out. How do I get the votes right? I gotta keep the House Freedom Caucus people happy. I've got to keep the other moderate Republicans happy.
I'm definitely not going to leave these negotiations with the government shut down on a default of our debt or whatever the case may be. That's not going to happen. So then the people negotiating with him know this, and so here we are. Here we are. So that's that's another point takeaway as well. I'm gonna take a time out. I've got two more to get too. I'm long on this segment and I'm going to pick these up on the other side of the time out. Sit time my friends back in just
a minute. Welcome back to my friends. I'm gonna have to get a new Mike stand here. This thing is not going where I wanted to go anyway. Two more takeaways. Two more takeaways from the negotiations between McCarthy and the White House from number one or number four here, I've gone through the previous three. If you missed any of it, check it out on the
podcast Totally Free to do. But number four, number four, I find myself asking the question if this little letdown, if you will, by McCarthy, has actually laid the groundwork for someone in the House to move to vacate the chair, which basically means moving to replace Kevin McCarthey Speaker of the House. Now, everyone out there so far has been saying, yeah, that's not going to happen. I don't see that being the result whatever, but
it could be the first domino to fall. So I would say we should keep our eye on that, because again, this is where I'm actually I'm actually one hundred percent on team Matt Gates with this. I'm one hundred percent
in alignment with Lauren Boebert on this. I think that that that actually is probably has probably made this negotiated bill or settlement or agreement or whatever more well closer to conservative principles than it would have been otherwise, which is maybe scary given how far it is away from it right now out But that's another takeaway. The last thing is I would I would say this, we as Republicans,
we as conservatives, are never going to win. We're never going to win the debate, We're never going to win the issue if we play by their rules, if we accept their terms. They're terms of the debate, not just terms of the debate, but actually the definition of terms. I've shared this story before when I was in college and a hundred years ago that I was debating a girl about abortion, and she said what she called me
anti choice, and normally Republicans conservatives would get all defensive. I'm not anti choice, No, I said, I tell you what. I allow you to call me anti choice when you allow me to call you anti life. And she stood there, sat there for a moment, kind of shocked and trying to compute what I told her. Is candidly, I don't think it had ever happened before because conservatives are either too nice, we don't want to turn up to pressure. Some folks just you know, just don't have it
in them. I don't know. We get defensive, we get the pressure of everyone else in the class. I don't know. But we need we need more of that. We need more of that. I I remember another time I was in college. My professor we were doing like a mock Congress thing. Again, this is one hundred years ago. I won't say her name, female professor at Butler University. She was a very militant feminist,
but she we got along. We got everybody. I mean, luck, everybody gets along with me as much as much as it's up to me, I'm telling you anyway, so we get along. We haven't you know that this mock Congress. Of course, I'm assigned to be the conservative person in the Congress. And she asks me, what's your position on this? And I said, well, my position is the government shouldn't be involved in this. No no, no, no, no todd no no no. But
what's the conservative answer to this? And I kept telling her the conservative answer is that the concern is that the private sector should do this. She literally could not grasp what I was telling her. Probably a PhD in political science wouldn't accept it anyway. But if my point is is, if we continue having leaders who play by Democrat rules, we're never ever going to win.
And I think that's another thing that we can learn from this timeouts in order though, my friends, back in just a minute, Come back, my friends. That is why the things we've talked about today, it is why the time to I guess fight for control of the Republican Party is actually this time before the primaries start, the time before the primary starts. I think that you know, there are opportunities out there, and we're all different, right, I know, we all have our own lane. Mine is on
this show yours can be. I mean, any any number of things you could you could be doing. We should all be at least influencing those people in our sphere of influence. But I will say this, some people out there listening to my voice may need to get involved in the Republican Party, maybe even run for a position of leadership. I'm talking about your local Republican
party. If you feel that inkling, now is the time to get involved, to meet people, to see how the leadership's doing it, and potentially potentially through your hat in the mix when the time comes right. I don't know anything anyway, I've got to go. My friends, hang in there. We'll talk with you tomorrow. SDG