Cruzing on Air Force One

Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator. You know I often express envy and hurt that I'm not invited to your Senate Republican lunches, and I got to tell you the ride aboard Air Force One sounds like, well, I don't know, someday, I assume my invitation was lost in the mail. Please. It sounds like you had a crazy day yesterday. Take us through it. Well, we did, as you and I were supposed to film Verdict yesterday together in DC, and

I'm embarrassed to admit that I canceled on you. I stood you up because, well, the President was coming to Texas and so he asked if I wanted to come along as he was heading to Midland and was highlighting energy production and America's energy independence and that's an issue I cared deeply about, and I'll pretty much always come along if someone's going to Texas. And so it was

an interesting day though. So the way it started, I had to be at the White House about seven am yesterday, And for anyone that comes in contact with the President, they do a COVID test, so that's obligatory. Before you can get on, you go get tested. So I went into the White House, got tested yesterday morning. The folks here in the studio will be glad to know as of yesterday morning, I confirmed negative WET and got in

the van to head to Andrews Air Force Base. And there were a couple of Texas members of Congress that we're flying with us. And suddenly we're sitting there and we hear, well, Louie Gomer's not coming. What do you mean, Louie Gomer's not coming. He was going to join us, He was going to be on the flight. Louie is hysterical, by the way, like anytime you spend time with Louie you will be holding your ribs laughing. So we're all like, well, why isn't Louie coming. Well, he was at the White

House and he tested positive. So that's how the morning started with Louie had to turn around and leave and was not allowed on the plane because he just tested positive. So we take the van, we go jump on Air Force one. The President joins us, we take off while we're in the air, so we're headed to Midland, Texas. A whole bunch of Republican candidates for Congress who were running in various seats. They're not incumbents, they're running against Democrats,

are in open seats. They were all meeting us in Midland, and the plan was that those Republican candidates they were going to invite on the plane and meet the President and do a photo op and they're all excited. Well, we find out mid air that one of those Republican candidates got named Wesley Hunt, who's running here in Houston in my home district. Great guy, he tested positive for COVID.

So he was literally heading to meet Air Force one and he tests positive for COVID, and as a result, they said, well, okay, all of you candidates, none of you can go in and see the president now because of that. So it was a fairly surreal beginning to the day. And listen, it's an underscoring that this remains a dangerous disease and we need to continue to take serious steps to limit its spread. Right, if for no other reason, then you might miss your chance to go

on Air Force One. So you got to make sure you behave responsibly and don't catch it well. It's one of the biggest reasons actually that you joined the president on a trip and I've done at this point a number of trips on Air Force One with the President is that you spend a lot of time with him, and so if there are issues going on, it is some of the most concentrated, intense time, and it's a stark difference. First four years I was in the Senate,

Barack Obama was president that entire time. I went on Air Force One once. If you remember when when five Dallas police officers were murdered and there was a funeral for those police officers, Obama came down to speak at it and he invited me to come along. Actually, I sat next to Nancy Pelosi on Air Force One. We had it may have been the first time I had met Nancy. We had a very pleasant conversation, mostly about

her grandkids, not about anything remotely related to politics. And the interesting thing about Obama's he wouldn't hang out with us. He briefly came back and talked with There were several folks that were coming down and that had been invited to guests, and he came back briefly and kind of said, Hi, how you doing okay? Great, and then went off went off to his office and we didn't see him the rest of the flight. Trump is totally different. Like Trump hangs out, he wants to like the office on Air

Force One. It's it's exact actually like the movie. It's a cool desk with the seal and it's so there were the Texas House members and look or there Texas members of the US House who were there who were pretty excited, and so I was taking pictures of all of them. All right, go stand by the president, give me your phone, I'll take a picture. So I was

the designated photograph, the photographer. But it's it's actually really valuable because you're sitting down with the president for significant time talking and right now there is a lot to talk about. So we had probably seven hours of he and I discussing, in particular the economic challenges in the country and the legislation moving moving through the Senate right now, and so it was it was a propitious time to

be there with him. Well, without you know, asking you to violate any confidences or tell any tales at a school, I would like to know something about perhaps what you spoke about or what you're thinking about this economic relief bill that seems to be coming down the pike in the midst of all this kind of bad economic news. Well, let's take it in a couple of pieces, and I'll

tell you what I think. I'm not going to share what the President said, and that's usually the line I try to follow, is what I said, I'm happy to relay. I'll leave it to others to share what they said. But but let me just get in my views, the Nancy Pelosi three trillion dollar bill that they passed a couple of months ago is an absolute monstrosity. It is three trillion dollars, even in government speak, is a crap ton of money. And it's a bill. Look, Pelosi wasn't

intending to pass that in the law. It's it's a bill that is just a Democratic wish list. And she didn't talk to any Republican, she didn't talk to the Senate. It was a campaign document. They passed it so that Democrats could campaign on it in November. That's all it's about. Then we get to the Senate. Unfortunately, in the Senate this week, the Republican leader Mitch McConnell rolled out his own plan, and the so called Republican Leadership Plan is

it's cheaper than the Democrats plans. Instead of three trillions, it's only one trillion. But it's it's fundamentally flawed, and so I have been very outspoken against it, very outspoken at our lunches that we do every day in the Republican Conference that you and I have talked about before, but I've been very outspoken publicly, and I was very clear with the President what I thought yesterday when we

were together. I seem to recall, if some people haven't been following you your takes on this, you said that as the legislation currently stands, you're not just to know you're a hell no, yep, that that is exactly right

on a couple of levels. First of all, let's talk the amount, like the one trillion, which is a ton of money, is clearly just an opening bid, and nobody's hiding the fact, Okay, we'll start at a trillion, but the plan is to get negotiate up to one and a half or two or two and a half, and we don't have it. There's no magic money tree in Washington. It's not like there's some secret vault hidden in the

Capitol nobody knows about. This is all money that we're either printing or borrowing from China, but it doesn't exist. We've already spent over three trillion dollars and so the amount is a problem. But actually my concern, Michael, is much bigger than the amount, and this is that this was the center of what I was arguing to the President yesterday. The focus of the bill, the objective of the bill is wrong. The objective of the bill is

just shoveling cash. It's just spending trillions of dollars shoveling it into the economy, but none of it creates jobs. And so what I've been arguing to the other Republicans, what I've been arguing to President, our focus on this bill should be one thing. In particular, it should be creating jobs. We've got now fifty one million Americans who've lost their jobs because of this catastrophe that's hit this country. We've got to get them back to work. That is

overwhelmingly the priorities. Get people back to work. And you know, you look at these first bills, the bills that we passed several months ago, in the height of the crisis. Those were overwhelmingly bipartisan. The big one, the Cares Act, ninety six to nothing. Every Democrat, every Republican voted yes. I voted yes. Bertie Sanders voted yes. That was not a stimulus bill. It wasn't designed to stimulate the economy. The press calls it a stimulus bill, but that's not

what it was. It was a relief bill. It was designed to give emergency loans, short term loans to people at the very height of the crisis. Now our focus has got to be different. It's got to be getting people back to work. We need a recovery bill. Now, what does the recovery bill do? Our entire focus, I think should be cutting taxes and reducing regulations that are killing jobs, making it easier for small businesses to open. That's the issue. And by the way, the entire election

in November turns on it. So the Democrats, what does Nancy Pelosi want. She wants all fifty one million people who've lost their jobs to stay unemployed, to stay at home, to not be working, to not have their kids in school, because she is gambling on that fifty one million people who are broken, unemployed and out of a job and pissed off are going to go in and vote to throw the bums out, and she's most interested in defeating

Donald Trump. Well, the case I made to the President and to the other Republicans is we shouldn't be complicit in that objective. If the President wants to win in November, we need people going back to work, We need people earning a paycheck, We need people providing for their families again. And simply spending trillions for Nancy Pelosi's buddies ain't going

to get the job done. You know, I remember early on when when there were those debates over the initial relief bill, you in particular pointed out that this language that the Democrats added in on the question of unemployment insurance was going to disincentivize people going back to work. And it now seems that your prediction turned out to

be true. There's a Cato Institute survey of this. It showed that two thirds of people who went on unemployment for the COVID lockdowns are making more money than they would have made had they remained at their jobs. And one third of people actually made two times or you know, two x their salary, which you know, wonderful for them. I don't think we begrudge anybody money, but that is a recipe to keep people out of work that would

seem to have a political objective in an election year. Well, incentives matter, and the dumbest part of what Congress did already in this crisis was creating massive disincentives to work. And in particular, what Congress did is added six hundred dollars a week to the already existing unemployment conversation. So, look, we had an unemployment system. If you lost your job, you could file file for unemployment. That's designed to be to help you meet basic necessities, but it's designed to

be substantially less than your job was. Because you want people who've lost their job to have strong incentives to go back to work. The best thing if someone's out of work has helped them get back to work. Adding six hundred dollars to unemployment, let me give you some math and I apologize to everyone in the podcast. There was supposed to be no math. They told me I couldn't sign up for this. Let me give you just

a little bit. So. It used to be the maximum weekly unemployment check in Texas was five hundred and twenty one dollars a week. When Congress added six hundred dollars to that, that took it to eleven hundred and twenty one dollars a week, more than doubled it. That works out to about fifty eight thousand dollars a year, or about twenty eight dollars an hour. Now, think about it for a second. If you're if you're working waiting tables, if you're working in an hourly job, you ain't making

twenty eight bucks an hour. And if suddenly the government pays you more to stay home than to go back to work, well naturally you're not going to go back to work. I mean, if you're paid more to do

something else, you're going to follow the incentives. But that's terrible for you, and it's terrible for the economy, and it's why Nancy Pelosi wants to keep doing it, and the Republicans are falling in this trap that sixty eight percent of people nationally right now because of what Congress did, are receiving more ununemployment than their previous salary twenty percent, or receiving double their previous salary. If you're getting paid twice as much not to work as to work, what

are you gonna do? I mean, that ain't complicated, and it's why Nancy Pelosi is all in on wanting to keep that going right until November third, right until the election. But Republicans shouldn't be complicit in that. And I talk to small business owners every single day that they're trying to reopen their businesses and they can't rehire their employees. They're calling their employees saying come back, and they're saying, understandably,

why would we come back. We're getting paid more not to That is disastrous for getting the economy moving again and getting people back on their feet. Right. It's a pretty deceitful tactic. It would see them. I understand the political objectives the Democrats have, but you know, you're you're not getting what they seem to be proposing. You know, this has this underhanded aspect. I think that ties in pretty well with another underhanded display we saw from Democrats

on Capitol Hill this week, which was the billbar testimony. Yeah, and let me actually stop you there and go back to the prior topic for a second, which is, let me tell you right now, what is pretty good in the in the Republican bill, okay, and what could be good in the Republican bill. So there are two elements

that are mildly good in the Republican bill. Number one, it includes actually legislation that I've introduced that is for school choice, that creates federal tax credits for contributions to scholarship granting organizations for K through twelve education. That's really good, and it's really important, and it's really substantive, and it's transformational. And as you know, I'm passionate about school choice. Now. The problem is the Democrats are passionately opposed because the

teachers unions opposed choice. And my concern is the Republican negotiators will give that up at the table that it's in there, but it's not going to stay in there. That it's in there to be a bargaining chip to be given up. The second good elements right now is some liability protection. And there's no doubt it's a real problem right now for any small business, for any school, for any university that opens, they're going to be sued. All of them are going to be sued. Trial lawyers

are going to descend upon them. Yeah, because if any customer gets sick, if any employee gets sick, immediately they're getting sued. So I very much agree with the objective of providing some reasonable liability protection so that people could open. It's not their faulty. It's not like the small businesses. It's not like the movie theater created this this coronavirus from Wuhan, China, and and it doesn't make sense for billions of dollars of damage judgments to make a bunch

of plantiffs lawyers rich suing everybody. But the problem is those same plantiffs lawyers are, along with the teachers unions, the biggest owners to the Democrats. So they're going to fight to water that provision down. So those two provisions are right now pretty good, but my concern is they will be gutted. Here's what we ought to be doing instead.

We ought to be engaged in pro growth policy. So, for example, instead of just shoveling cash out the door, one thing we could do is between now and the end of the year, suspend the payroll tax. That results in for you and for everyone, basically an immediate pay raise in your job because the payroll tax you pay out of your pocket. Suddenly your take home pay is higher. But that's an incentive for work. Suddenly your employer apportion

payroll chat tax your employer pays. Suddenly the cost of employees of bringing back an employee has gone down for your employer. That is a pro growth incentive. That is a pro jobs incentive. That is all about helping encourage people to go back to work and work more. That's a very worthwhile thing to do. Another example of a very good thing to do. I've got legislation on health

savings accounts. So health savings accounts are accounts where you can save in a tax advantage way for healthcare needs. The problem is, current law prohibits most people from having a health savings account. The only instance in which you're allowed to have a health savings account is if you have a high deductible health insurance plan, which most people don't have. I have legislation that says everyone can have a health savings plan. That just lets everyone have one.

That is really important healthcare reform right now in terms of changing the system, driving down the cost of healthcare, making healthcare more affordable. And we're in the middle of a pandemic. People are understandably concerned with healthcare costs. This would be really meaningful reform. So this is something I urged the President, and I said, by the way, for the Republicans that want to shovel cash, look, we've got the checks of twelve hundred dollars sent out to everyone.

My parents both received twelve hundred dollar checks. They don't need a twelve hundred dollar check. But Congress set on one the proposals to do it again. I said, listen, if you are really intent on throwing money out of a helicopter, how about taking the twelve hundred dollars and populating it in a health savings account for everyone, so that everyone can suddenly have a health savings account to

meet healthcare costs. If you must spend the money, actually spend it in a way that does some positive, if good. Right next week, I'm going to introduce a bill that I'm calling the Recovery Act that is going to be a whole series of pro jobs, pro growth steps that if we're going to take our focus should be getting people back to work. And right now, the current so called Republican bill that is going to lose a lot of Republican votes if and when we vote on it

is not focused on jobs. Pelosi wants jobs to go away. And right now, basically the Republican bill took the Nancy Pelosi bill, divided all the numbers by three, and proposed the same damn thing. We should have different ideas, ideas that work. And a final political point, So are there's some Republicans who are really scared. We got to do this. We just got to do it. It's an election. You got to spend money. Look in the battle to be

Santa Clause, Republicans will always lose. If suddenly we pony up three trillion dollars, they'll go to four like like there's no limit. And frankly, show me the voter out there that's really looking for a bunch of cash that's actually going to vote for the president because of it. If you want someone to bankrupt the country and bankrupt your kids and grandkids in order to get more cash, right now, you're going to vote Democrats. Yeah, I think it's a null set. We should be the party of

jobs and growth and prosperity and higher wages. Look at other proposal. I told the President, all right, at five, you want to spend money, waive the federal income tax for the next six months up to a certain amount. That again puts real money in people's pockets now, and unlike what's being proposed, it doesn't kill jobs. We should be creating jobs, not killing jobs. Well, I love this point you're making. You're you're never going to out democrat

the democrats. You're never going to outliberal the liberals. There's a famous conservative book from many decades ago called a Choice, not an echo. You want you want to actually have a choice in your politicians when you go to the ballot box. And I got to tell you, as somebody who has an HSA, who uses an HSA, I love HSA's I think it is it's brilliant. It's shocking to me that they have not been more popular, they haven't been more encouraged over time. And I think a lot

of that is a law prohibited. The reason they're not more popular is Congress. Unless you have a high deductible health insurance plan, it's legal for you to have an HSA. The poet I'm trying to make to the other Republicans, like, is there anything we want to accomplish that actually would be good and fix the problem. We shouldn't rush out like chicken little and say we must do something to do something. Let's do something that would work and help

people get back to work. That's right. There a lot a lot of perverse incentives I noticed going on on the left side of the aisle on Capitol Hill. And I think nowhere was this clearer than when our former verdict guest, the Attorney General William Barr, was invited to testify on Capitol Hill. He was actually he accepted the invitation on the very day that you and I sat

down with him at the Department of Justice. And so he finally goes to sit down for this hearing, and then it turned out that the Democrats and a House of Representatives didn't really want to hear a single word he had to say. It really was studying. When you and I were interviewing Bill Barr, you recall we nicknamed him Honey Badger, which wasn't planned that that was off the cuff. But if anyone didn't believe that nickname. You just had to watch the you know, the Liliputians trying

to tie him down. I mean it was small and petty democrats relentlessly attacking him. And I love that Bar is completely not concerned. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone drink coffee in a more dismissive way. There's something about the coffee cup that just said you are an utter buffoon. And the part that was really ridiculous is you'd have a Democrat go given a histrionic speech and then they'd declare, I reclaim my time. You reclaim my time, which basically means shut up. I'm scared of

your answer. I don't want you to answer me, and I'll look really dumb if you do. And they did it over and over again, reclaiming their time, reclaiming their time, and it ultimately was an expression of fear. And I'll tell you, Michael, I actually had a conversation about House democrats reclaiming their time a couple of days before Bill bar testified. And let me tell you why. So next week I'm chairing a hearing in the Senate on riots, on violence, on antifa, on the organized terrorists who are

burning and attacking our cities. And first witness we're going to have is Ken Cuccinelli. Ken is the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Ken is the former Attorney General of Virginia. He is a rock rib conservative. Ken is a good friend and right now Ken is leading the efforts to secure the border, but he's also fighting for the federal law enforcement officers of the Democrats are you know, Nancy

Pelosi's calling them Nazi stormtroopers, which is grotesque. So when Ken and I are talking on the phone and I'm telling them, Hey, Ken, I really want you to come to this hearing we're chairing, he said, listen. One thing that he said I really don't like when I testify at the house is they'll attack you. And then the Democrats will say, I reclaim my time. So they attack you and they don't give you a chance to respond. And this is before the bar hearing, by the way.

And I laughed and I said, I said, well, Ken, let me tell you this. In any hearing I chair, the Democrats are going to attack you. That's that's for sure. They're going to come after your hard because they've decided to demogogue every police officer in America. But I can promise you, if I'm chairing the hearing, You're damn well going to get a full chance to respond each and

every attack headed your way. We have that conversation kenn Is coming to the hearing, and then like a day or two later, Bill bar goes through this this ridiculous charade where they are terrified of his answers and quote reclaim their time. If the words I reclaim my time ever come out of my mouth other than quoting them, throw something at me, Michael that they simply will. I ain't going to say that, Senator, You've been spending too much time with the Democrats. You must get come back

to yourself. You know, I don't think I had read anywhere that Ken Cuccinelli is going to be testifying. Is that this is that is that is breaking news where we were going to announce that next week, but I just announced it with you, terrific. I very much look forward to hearing that because obviously I think this issue of the mobs, the organized violence, ANTIFA has been at

the top of a lot of people's minds. Yeah, so I look forward to seeing that, and I look forward also to not having just echoes of reclaim my time, take up all the time that we could actually be hearing from someone who has so much to say on this. One last question before we let you go, Senator, This is from Kira. I think a lot of people are wondering this these days, if they're living in urban centers in America. Is there any hope for sane people in

New York City? Or should we flee? What about New York in general? What is what is the future? Not just maybe of New York, but of all the cities. Do we all have to flee down to Texas? All right? So let me take New York. Actually listen. I'm an optimist by nature. I believe in America. I believe in freedom. I even believe in New York. And I'll point I often point to history as foreshadowing of the future. I'll confess I think things are going to get worse in

New York in the short term. I think the malignant politics there. I think radicals like de Blasio when they're proposing cutting a billion dollars from the NYPD and AOC is saying not enough, basically burn it to the ground. That's not quite what she said, but she said, defunded and abolish it, which is the same thing. In the short term, New York is going to head to some dark, dark days and it's but New York went through this in the sixties and seven, and we saw rampant crime

in New York. New York was facing bankruptcy. I mean, the policies of the far left, they don't work, and every time they're implemented, particularly in the extreme, they are a disaster. So what's the good news is that when people see the disaster, they often open up their eyes and say, hey, this doesn't make any sense, let's change it. And New York had a renaissance. Why do they have a renaissance? Remember Rudy Giuliani when he was elected and

not Rudy. Rudy today is a very different person than Mayor Rudy was when he was first elected. But New Yorkers were sick and tired. They were sick and tired of the crime, they were sick and tired of the violence, they were sick and tired of the shambles the city had had gone through. And Rudy got elected. Remember the broken windows theory, which is, let's let's when you go into a neighborhood and you see shattered windows, you see graffiti, and you see row. That makes all of the rest

of violent crime more likely. And so go repair the windows, Go clean up the graffiti, Go stop the squeegee guys who used to just dump crap on your car in the streets, and it actually stops the rest of violent crime too. So de Blasio and the radicals have forgotten those lessons. I think they will go through a dark period, and many of our cities may go through a dark period.

But when the failures of radical left policies become evident, I think people will turn back to them and say, hey, we want a New York City where you can walk in Central Park again and be safe. We want a New York city where you can open a business and survive. There are many things about New York that are extraordinary, that are wonderful that it has been. The statue of liberty invites the whole world. We've seen immigrants from across

the globe come to New York to make it. But the policies of the socialists can destroy all of that. But we'll come out of it. That's why I think a lot of the moving trucks are heading down to your state, Senator, and you know I'm a New Yorker and I live in Los Angeles. Both my cities have me wanting to fly straight down to where you are. Probably not a board Air Force one. I haven't gotten that invitation yet, but maybe I'll fly commercial and see

you there. Hey, Southwest one, you can sit in NYC. That's true. That's I got some drink tickets too. We will have to pause it there until next time. Thank you, Senator. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across

the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.