Welcome. It is Verdict Live on.
The Road at the Texas Youth Summit. Ben Ferguson. With you is Senator Ted Cruz. Senator. I feel like this is a hostage video. You are in Washington, held hostage right now because of a looming government shutdown. We know that the President, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of your best friends.
They're excited about this shutdown.
Explain to everybody what's gonna happen with a shutdown and how it's playing out.
Well for this hostage video, I will try to refrain from blinking sos with my eyelids, but I am indeed trapped in a lunatic asylum.
I'm in Washington, DC.
My plan had been to be back there with you. I've been to the Texas Youth Summit multiple years. It's a fantastic gathering. Let me say to all the young men, all the young women who are there, who are standing up, who are speaking out, who are engaging and making a difference, making a difference in your community, making a difference in Texas, making a difference in the country. Thank you for your leadership. It is a great event. That's why I always love coming.
But I'm right now stuck in DC because we are hours away from yet another government shutdown. And so if Congress doesn't act, and I think the chances of Congress acting are very very low, I think it is extremely likely that will have a shutdown. If Congress doesn't act by midnight tonight, then at twelve oh one am, funding for the federal government will end, and I think we're likely to have an extended government shutdown.
I think it's gonna last while.
Let's talk about the politics of a shutdown. Each side has to have a calculation. They have these conversations who wins, who loses, and how this is going to be affecting their party. What is a shutdown? You've been through a couple of these, what are your concerns? And also there's some civility that should be in these shutdowns, that certain people get paid.
And yet there are good.
Men and women that protecting to find this country who Democrats seem to be wanting to play politics for them not getting a paycheck.
That really bothers me.
Well, there's a constrain of two things.
One a basic constitutional principle that the federal government cannot spend money unless Congress has appropriated it. So what's causing this shutdown is the fiscal year. The federal fiscal year ends today September thirtieth, and that's where the appropriations run out, which means you need new appropriations. They're typically three ways that Congress will appropriate. One you can pass individual appropriation bills for particular government programs or cabinet agencies. That's called
regular order. That's the way it used to happen routinely. That happens very rarely now. A second way to do it is you can pass what's called an omnibus, which is basically taking a bunch of those appropriations bills, combining them all together, and passing them as one gigantic, multi trillion dollar spending bill. That happens with some regularity. The third way is you can pass what's called a CR, a continuing resolution, and a continuing resolution basically just kicks
the can down the road. It typically extends government spending for a finite period of time.
So you could have.
A one week CR, a two week CR, a thirty day CR, a ninety day CR. Just depends on what the sides negotiate. If none of those get passed, and I think none of those are the most likely outcome today is none of them will get passed today. Then what happens is federal government spending stops, but federal workers who are deemed essential workers still have to go to work. So for example, the military, if you're stationed in harm's way, the military still has to go to work because they're
essential workers. Air traffic controllers. Everyone wants to get on an airplane tomorrow. Don't worry, you're not going to get on an airplane and discover the no air traffic controllers and planes are just flying willy dilly. Air traffic controllers are essential. They show up and go to work. And so there are thousands upon thousands of federal workers that are deemed essential who come in and go to work, but they don't get paid.
They go to work, but they don't get.
A paycheck now in the past, and also there are programs that are mandatory programs that are benefit programs. Those programs continue, so for example, Social Security and medicare the checks people are getting in the mail.
Those checks keep coming.
So that part, which is a big part of the federal budget, that continues automatically. What stops is discretionary federal spending that is non essential, and if Congress doesn't act today, that will stop at twelve o one am tonight.
You are obviously a huge proponent of fiscal responsibility.
I just pulled up on my phone the national debt clock.
Right now, the national debts at thirty three trillion, one hundred and twenty one billion, four hundred and ninety four million. Debt per citizen highest we've ever seen a ninety eight thousand and six sixty seven a person.
But not everybody pays taxes.
That means right now debt per US taxpayers two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars three hundred and fifty three.
Dollars and counting.
You look at these government shutdowns, and the argument is we're trying to fight for more physical responsibility. What are Republicans need to do because this is a point where we're bankrupting not just this country, but the future of this country and the kids and the grandkids in this country.
Well, look, that's exactly right.
I think a shutdown is very very likely because the incentives of all the players are such that it's just inevitable that they're just crashing into each other. I think Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer both really want a shutdown. They have decided politically it's good for them to have
a shutdown. Now, why is that? The reason they think it's politically good for Democrats to have a shutdown is inevitably one hundred out of one hundred times, the media, the official parents for the Democrat Party, blame every shutdown on Republicans that happens like night follows day, every yapping marionette in the media is going to do that. And so the Democrats are saying, hey, you know, biden agenda's going really badly.
The border is total.
Chaos, the economy is a mess. We don't want to talk about any of that. Let's have a shutdown instead and have all the media blaming those mean, terrible Republicans for shutting down the government. That's why I think Biden and Schumer want a shutdown. On the other hand, in the House, and this is principally a battle between House Republicans and the White House. In the House, Kevin McCarthy is the Speaker of the House, but he has just
a four vote majority, incredibly narrow majority. What Biden and Schumer are demanding of McCarthy is complete and total surrender. Surrender altogether, fund every single one of our big government left wing priorities, and if you don't, we'll shut down the government.
Keaven can't give in.
It is impossible for Kevin to surrender the way Schumer and Biden are demanding, because if Kevin surrenders, his.
Speakership will be over.
You will see a House Republican member file what's called a motion to vacate the chair, and he'll be voted out as speaker. And so Kevin cannot politically survive surrendering to Biden and Schumer. Given those dynamics, I don't think Schumer and Biden are going to budge and I don't think Kevin can give them everything they want. I think we go to a shutdown, and once a shutdown happens, what happens next, Well, it ratchets up pressure. People start
discovering things they're not happy about. For example, if there's a shutdown tomorrow, our national parks are closed. So maybe some of y'all were planning to go to a national park, go hiking in Yellowstone.
All of that's closed. When there's a government shutdown.
Maybe some families come into Washington d c and planning to come to the Smithsonian if there's a shutdown tomorrow the museums are all closed. Those tend to be some of the things early on that really tick off people interacting with the government. Now, the nightmare for Democrats is you have a government shutdown and the people buy and large don't notice.
And I'll have to say it, awful lot of people.
If you're not specifically using some federal asset or activity, you may notice very little is different during a government shutdown, and that's a dangerous lesson. Democrats don't want the American people to learn that. That being said, that the breadth of a shutdown varies because often Congress will have passed some appropriations. So in past shutdowns, we've always paid our military.
That's what typically happens.
And this week I've gone to the Senate floor three different times trying to pay our military. Now, and in particular, I want to contrast Ben what happened this week to what happened ten years ago. In twenty thirteen, we had a big government shutdown. I was right in the middle of that battle that was over obamac here. Government was shut down for sixteen days, but we paid all of our active duty military. That was actually a bill that
passed right at the beginning of the shutdown. It passed unanimously, so it was a Harry Reid Senate. It was a Democrat Senate one hundred to nothing, paying our military during the shutdown, pass the House four hundred and thirty five to nothing. It passed unanimously, and Barack Obama signed it in the law. So ten years ago, everyone agreed, all right, if there's a shutdown battle, let's not hold our active duty military hostage. The most recent shutdown was twenty nineteen.
It was the Schumer shutdown. It lasted thirty five days. During those thirty five days, Chuck Schumer had a showdown with Donald Trump. Schumer did not want to fund a border wall, did not want to fund additional resources to secure the border. Schumer wants open borders. We had a thirty five day shutdown. During that period, Congress had passed
the appropriations for DoD for the Department of Defense. So that meant our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, our marines, and our Space Force members all got their paychecks, but the Coast Guard did not. The Coast Guard is not under DoD. The Coast Guard is under DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, and so for thirty four days the
Coastguard went with no paychecks. And I went back then in twenty nineteen to the Senate floor to try to pass legislation to say, let's treat the Coastguard fairman, Let's not discriminate against the coast Guard. Let's not treat them like the red haired stepchild of our millet terry. They deserve to be paid just like all of the other
branches of the military. And in twenty nineteen, Democrat leadership stood up and blocked it, objected to that legislation, and so coastguardsmen went for over a month with no paycheck. Fast forward to today. This week, Dan Sullivan, Senator from Alaska, a good friend of mine and he's in the Marine Reserves.
He's also a colonel in the Marines.
Dan and I went to the Senate floor to try to pass a simple, straightforward bill. First of all, to pass the bill I authored that says if you pay the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, you should pay the Coastguard to so it was a parody bill. The Democrats stood up and objected. Pat Murray whose chairman of the Appropriation Committee, Patty Murray, she objected on behalf of Shumer and what she said as well, I object because
this doesn't mandate that we pay everyone. It just says you treat him equally and Sullivan and I said, okay, great. So we came this week with Sullivan's bill, which is pay all of our active duty military. Pay our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coastguardsmen, space force guardians, pay them all.
The Democrats objective.
They've objected twice, and so tomorrow, if our active duty military loses their paycheck tomorrow, it is because Democrats said two words yesterday on the Senate floor, and those two words were I object That killed the bill.
What is your gut on democrats do?
Are they going to fill the pressure to do the right thing, because you shouldn't hold these people hostage that are protecting and serving. But my gut is they probably say no, just because this makes too much sense and they want this to hurt.
They wanted to hurt this week.
One of the arguments Patty Murray made, she said, well, gosh, I want to pay the military, but I want to pay everyone else to I want to pay all the federal government, and so we need to fund the entire federal government.
I make clear.
Look, there's a nineteen year old marine right now at the DMZ that is facing North Korean machine guns, and that's fundamentally different than an ordinary federal worker. And the Democrats view is they care more about the IRS agent coming to harass small businesses in Texans. They care more about the regulators try to shut down oil and gas in Texas? Did they care more about the bureaucrats at the EPA trying to destroy jobs than they do?
Actually?
The brave young men and women who defend us, and you know, Ben, it's worth reflecting what's changed? So listen, ten years ago, everyone agreed on this. I pointed out repeatedly on the Senate floor. Patty Murray voted for this ten years ago. Chuck Schumer voted for this ten years ago. Dick Durbin voted for this ten years ago. What's changed? And I'll tell you what's changed. When we had this debate on the Senate floor yesterday, I looked up in
the gallery. There were no reporters, completely empty. What has changed is the corrupt corporate media has become so thoroughly corrupt, that if you rely on CNN or MSNBC or ABC, CBS, NBC for your news, you have no idea that the reason our military is not going to get a paycheck tomorrow is because the Democrats decided to block it to.
Hold them hostage.
And the reason the Democrats do this is they know they'll never be questioned. I point out to reporters. Reporters are all running up to me in the Capitol this week and they're the they're and they're saying saying, do you think it's right that those terrible Republicans are going
to shut down the government? And I laugh and I say, funny, how come you're not asking if I think it's right that that terrible Chuck Schumer and that terrible Joe Biden are going to shut down the government because they want to continue spending trillions of dollars we don't have. They want to continue driving inflation up to hurt people all
across the country. And by the way, because they refuse to do a damn thing to secure the southern border, because they want these open borders, and they're willing to shut the government down on it.
And I turn to reporters.
I say, did you write a story about the Democrats blocking paychecks for our military?
They're all like no, But I'm like, shut up, why are you talking to me.
You are a parrot, you are a hat, you are a propagandist.
You lie for a living.
And if you want to prove me wrong, go sit down at your little typewriter and type a damn story about what I said and what the Democrats said, so that the soldiers back in Washington State. No, they didn't get a paycheck tomorrow because Patty Murray objected because she thought it was politically advantageous to hold their paycheck's hostage.
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the call to action. I think it's clear everyone needs to call their senators, their congressmen and advocate for the pay of our men and women in military. We've had great success center with Verdict changing policy, but this is one of those moments where everybody listening, everybody watching, they need to make sure they call and reach out to their congressman, centaters and say do the right thing.
Well, and I'll say also, right before we started recording the podcast, Christian Collins came out, Welcome to everyone. Christian is a good friend. I appreciate his terrific leadership. And he suggested to everyone subscribing to the podcast, and I'm going to tell you there's actually a very easy way to do so. So Ben, I'm relying on you to be my eyes here because I can't see the students get athered there. But I want to ask everyone, pull out your cell phone. Pull out your cell phone right now.
Better their cell phones out.
They're listening to you, they're doing it. They got their cell phones out.
Okay, pull out your cell phone and text the word verdict V E R D I C T. Text the word Verdict to the number two four zero zero five. Let me give that to you. Again, the number is two four zero zero five. Text the word verdict to that number. What happens is you'll get a link back that you can click on the link and it'll subscribe you to this podcast. We do this podcast three days a week. We do it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the reason we do it is the corporate media is
utterly broken. You cannot learn what is happening by watching CNN. All you can learn is the regime's talking points of what the Biden White House wants you to know. And so this podcast is designed every week we are breaking news and explaining what's going on that you can't get anywhere else. And really what it's designed. Look, you got a couple of thousand young people gathered there right now.
Each of you.
Has a circle of influence around you. You're talking to your friends and your family, and you're able to be champions for liberty. But you got to have the information. You got to know what's happening. And so this podcast is designed to give you the tools, give you the equipment so that when you're talking with your classmate or your next door neighbor, your buddy, or your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you.
Know what the heck's going on.
You know the facts, and you're able to be a whole lot more effective.
Final question center for you, and this is an important one before we get to do what we both love, and that's Q and A when we do live Verdict events, is there is one story that this government shutdown is going to cover up. That is the impeachment inquiry to the Biden crime family and the President Knights America, Joe Biden. And also some shocking news this week that there was money to payments more than a quarter million dollars in
this summer of twoenty and nineteen. We talked about this on a previous Verdict and if you missed it, go back and listen to it. That went to the Biden family and the address US was the address of the sitting president United States of America, now his Delaware address. Now what's interesting is in Hunter Biden's own memoir he said during that time he lived in California. We also know that in the Sweetheart Plea deal that Hunter Biden got.
In that plea agreement, it also stated that he was living in California at the time of that wire transfer. I know the media is hoping this story gets covered up. But you combine that with this impeachment inquiry that's happening, this is a very important time for truth and what's coming out against what the Bidens were doing.
Look that that is exactly right.
And we do in addition to the podcast Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we do a Saturday issue that is a best of week in review, and actually today's Saturday podcast focuses on one of the stories it highlights is exactly this story that that Hunter Biden had wired to him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a quarter million dollars from communist China and the home address on that wire was Joe Biden's own residence.
It was Daddy's residence. Now, listen, that's not surprising.
Hunter Biden has no skills, he has nothing marketable, He doesn't do anything. When's the last time you had a complex job and you said, what I really need is a crackhead. That is not what Hunter Biden is selling. What Hunter Biden sells is Daddy. Joe Biden is the product favors from Daddy is what Hunter got paid millions and millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars
is selling favors from Daddy. And by the way, at the same time that that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars wire from communist China was coming with the home address of Joe Biden, Joe Biden was telling national reporters Hunter's never gotten.
Anything from China, just flat out line.
And one of the things we try to do with the podcast is walk through the actual evidence of what's going on on biden impeachment. The podcast is walked through chapter and verse the specific evidence, taking on, for example, the lie from Democrats and their puppets in the press that there is no quote, direct evidence of Joe's involvement in corruption.
That's a flat out lie. We explain why.
One of the things we covered this week on the podcast is the evidence that broke that there were three Iranian operatives assets being managed by the Iranian government who were working in senior positions of influence with the Biden administration, helping set national security policy for.
The Biden administration.
You literally have people controlled by the Ayatola and the Malas in Iran in senior positions advising on or working on Biden's national security Right now, there's still one of them at the Department of Defense, still drawing a paycheck with a security clearance, even though that person is an Iranian asset.
It's unbelievable. I want to get questions. This is something that you and I both love, and so you guys come up to these microphones you asked questions. I would ask you, since we are remote, keep them short and concise so that we can make sure that we get as many as possible in here.
If you'll also.
State your name and where you live and send it were a little bit of Q and A. We'll start over there.
Go ahead.
Hello, my name is Chloe Castillo. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. Thank you so much for being here today, mister Kruz. So my question for you is kind of a cultural question. With your recent pushback on Uganda regarding homosexual crimes, what are your thoughts on how the Western popular music culture actively pushes the LGBTQ agenda on our youth.
Look, Chloe, it's it's it's a great question.
And there's no doubt that Hollywood and the entertainment media as a whole pushes a radical left wing agenda, and that includes LGBTQ Elemento p I can't keep up with.
All the letters that are attached to it now. But but they push.
All of that that they push the transgender agenda. That they're obsessive in pushing the transgender agenda and pushing it on kids, pushing it on kids as young as they can find it. I mean, look, we recently had Target who was exposed selling selling bathing suits, uh for for infants and for toddlers, for little boys to tuck to hide their genitals, to pretend to be girls. And this is this is being marketed to two and three year olds. There is a pervasive effort to brainwash it, in particular
brainwash kids. I think it is incredibly dangerous. I've got a new book that is coming out next month in November. The name of the book is Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural.
Marxism in America.
And what the book does, It talks through every major or many of the major organs of society that the radical left has see. So it starts with universities, it goes to K through twelve education, It goes to journalism, it goes to entertainment, music, sports, it goes to science, it goes to big tech.
It goes to big business.
I actually talk quite a bit about Target, Target and bud Light together. That's a big chunk of the chapter on big business because the reaction to that between bud Light and Target, that's the first time we've seen real consequences to corporate America undermining.
Our basic values. And so, you know, you.
Mentioned you've gotten to made it a criminal offense to engage in homosexual conduct. I don't support that. I'm actually quite libertarian in my leaning. I think what consenting adults want to do in their own bedroom is their own damn business, and so I don't think it should be a criminal offense whatever you choose to do in that regard.
But there's a big difference between saying consenting adults can decide what to do in their own sex lives and saying that you want to see a radical agenda proselytized to children and normalized. Listen, I am. I'm a Christian. The Bible teaches that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Those are my beliefs. That's that's certainly what I teach and what I believe, and I'm not interested in in having an agenda shoved out our throat, and I think we need to be in all of these topics.
We need to be happy warriors. We need to be.
Saying what we believe with a smile because the other side.
Is so angry.
Let's go over here, senter, You're gonna love this.
The T shirts of the Texas Youth Summit are don't tread on Me, which is awesome. And our next question is coming from some of that has that T shirt and I love it.
Well done.
Hello, Senator Cruz. My name is Jenna. I go to u of H here and I work at a tax room as a tax consultant, and the tax deadline is coming up October eighteenth, and I was wondering how the government shutdown is going to affect the IRS and the accounting industry regarding that deadline that's coming up, and if you could explain kind of what's going to have.
Yeah, look, that's a very good question.
And I expect that if the shutdown goes long, and it could easily go a month. The last one was thirty five days and twenty nineteen, the Schumer shutdown, it could easily go a month.
What it would mean as.
A practical matter, is that much of the manpower at the IRS that would be available to assist you, that would be available to process returns, that would be available to answer questions, much of that manpower is not going to be there. They will keep essential workers, and it's up to eat each agent see to decide.
Who is essential.
But things like customer service almost always get deemed non essential and you end up with a significantly reduced workforce. And so you're working at a private firm, that that's going to mean that your clients are going to need your advice more significantly because the IRS is going to be less available to be responsive, even less than they normally are.
Let's take a question from over here.
Hi, Senator Cruz, my name is Helen and I'm from the Woodlands. My question to you is are you in favor of the age and term limits to be elected for Senate and Congress?
Thank you, Helen, Thank you for that question.
So let me break them down one at a time. You asked about age limits and term limits. On age limits, the only age limit we have for the Senate is the Constitution.
So the Constitution.
Provides that you have to be twenty five years old to be elected to the House of representatives. You have to be thirty years old to be elected to the Senate, and you have to be thirty five years old to be elected president. Other than that, there are currently no limits when it comes to serving in federal elected office, and it's one of the reasons why you see so many people in the Senate who.
Are one hundred and forty two years old.
I have joked, if you ever want to feel young, come work in the US Senate, because the median age is such that I have colleagues reminiscing about Eisenhower. I mean, it's you know, I feel like a sprightly young lad in the body in which I serve. Term limits is something that I emphatically support, and so I have repeatedly introduced in the Senate a constitutional amendment to mandate term limits, to limit senators, each senator to two terms, to limit each House member to three terms.
You know, it's interesting. Term limits was something.
I supported before I got to the Senate, but having seen this place firsthand, now I support it a thousand times more because this place.
Is the swamp.
It is corrupt, and the people who are here a long time are the worst. You get drawn in and corrupted by the swamp, and it's both parties. Look, the Democrats are bad, but for much of this spending that is bankrupting the country, we have a uniparty. We have Republican career politicians who jump in bed with the Democrats and eagerly spend trillions of dollars. And so term limits would be a major step to reducing that power and
reducing that corruption. And it's an amazing thing. If you look at term limits nationally, over seventy percent of American support term limits. That's true among Republicans, among Democrats.
And among independents.
You see massive majorities supporting term limits. The one group that doesn't is career politicians. In Washington, in the Senate, I have zero Democrats who support my term limits amendment.
One of the Democrats as opposed to it.
And I've chaired I used to be chairman of the Constitution's sub committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee. I chaired a hearing on term limits, brought in witnesses to talk about term limits. And the reality is in the Senate, the young guys support my term limits amendments, and none of the long time career politicians do.
And that's why neither.
Chuck Schumer nor Mitch McConnell wants term limits to get a vote on the Senate floor.
Because they oppose it that much.
So I've been fighting, but I have not been able to get it on the floor because Schumer and McConnell control what gets on the floor.
Let's get a question on this set over here.
How do you My name is Chad i' mis sophomore in Houston, and I wanted to ask how Congress can get back some tenth moment rights to the Satan people after events like nine to eleven and COVID have taken it away and given it to the federal government.
Look, that is a fantastic question if you look at the Bill of Rights and you asked about the tenth Amendment. When I was in college, I wrote my senior thesis on the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution.
And I'll tell you.
A little bit of the history of why they're written, and then I will get straight to your question. But originally the Constitution was written, there was no Bill of Rights, it was just the Constitution itself. And then there was a debate over whether to ratify the Constitution, and the two groups there were the federalists and the anti federalists, and the federalists were advocating, the Constitution's a good idea, we should ratify it, we should have it be the
organic document forming our government. The anti federalists, we're arguing against it. And one of the big arguments the anti federalists had is they said, well, there's no bill of rights. This is a flawed document because there's no provision in it protecting our fundamental liberties. Now, the federalists came back and they said, no, no, no, we don't need a bill of rights. And the reason the federalists gave is they said,
this is a government of enumerated powers. If you look at Article one, section eight of the Constitution, Article x one establishes the Congress the legislative function, an Article one, section eight specifies it enumerates eighteen specific powers that Congress has.
And the argument the federalists said is, look, we don't need to say that the federal government cannot violate your free speech, cannot violate your religious liberty, cannot violate your right to keep in bear arms, because there's nothing in the enumerated powers that gives the federal government the power to violate those rights, and so we've already done that
by limiting the federal government's authority initially. Now, the anti federalists came back and they had lots of arguments, one of which was, well, there's nothing to stop them from violating those rights within the enumerated power. So, for example, one of the enumerated powers is the power to create
and maintain post offices. Under the original Constitution, without a Bell of Rights, a government could say, the Biden administration will say, we will only transport letters from Democrats all Republicans. We've decided we don't want Republicans speaking anymore, so we won't transfer there. We won't transport their letters. Now, if the government tried to do that today, that would obviously be an unconstitutional violation of free speech. Without a Bill
of rights, it would be permissible. I think the anti federalist won that debate. So we now have a Bill of Rights. The first ten amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights, and the first eight are protecting specific rights, and then Amendments nine to ten both say Amendment nine says the enumeration of certain rights in the Bill of Rights shall not be construed to deny or to disparage other rights.
Retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment says the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people.
Basically, the ninth and tenth Amendments.
Restate that the Constitution is a constitution of enumerated powers. In other words, they say, even though we just listed these eight Bill of Rights, we agree that the federal government probably couldn't have done any of this anyway, but we want Belton suspenders.
And so the question.
I think the Tenth Amendment solves an enormous number of problems in our country. I think federalism having states decide and I would actually advise you to take a look at a center at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It's called the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies. I started it. I was the first director, the first leader of the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies at TPPF, and it's continued
and is ongoing. I agree that a vast we should put as much decision making, as much authority as possible at the state level, or even better at the local level, because it's more likely to meet the knee of the people that are being affected, and it's also more accountable. You the citizen are much more able to express your views and hold accountable local officials and state officials than some bureaucrat in a windowless office in Washington, d C.
Let's get a couple more questions in here on this side.
Go ahead, Hello, Senator Cruz. My name is Mary Melvied. I am eighteen and from Magnolia, Texas. It appears that Democrats have control of the elections illegally through mules and in counting ballots. How is our vote even going to matter? Is there a plate a plan in place for actually having our vote to count?
Well, Mary, thank you for that question. It's a hugely important question. You were right that voter fraud is a real problem, and it is a persistent problem. It's a problem that has been around since since the dawn of time, since the very first elections. I'm convinced that when the caveman sat got together to vote on who was going to be Grand Poobah, somebody.
Stuffed the ballot box.
That's just human nature that we have crooks, and crooks try to steal things. So we need to fight against voter fraud. We need to fight to preserve voter integrity. Now, the good news is we're in Texas, and Texas the Texas legislature has passed legislation strong legislation designed to prevent voter fraud. It's not perfect, it still exists, but we have tools in place to prevent voter fraud. There are things like requiring photo ID, which we do in Texas,
that reduces fraud. There are things like prohibiting ballot harvesting, prohibiting paid political operatives from handling someone else's ballot that reduces voter fraud significantly. Ballot harvesting invites voter fraud, things like limiting mail in ballots. In Texas, we do so only unlimited circumstances, typically seniors or people with significant disabilities, but for the vast majority of Texans. The way you
vote as you go vote in person. We have a two week period of early voting, so it's actually pretty easy to vote, but you vote in person. In person voting reduces the chances of voter fraud. I think we need to be vigilant fighting against voter fraud. I've spent twenty plus years fighting against fraud.
At the same time, if you look nationally.
They're blue states, they're purple states that they're not going to pass legislation to protect election integrity because the Democrats have decided they support voter fraud. It helps them, and it's the way the world's changed. Ten years ago, there were Democrats who would work with you on something like photo ID. There are none today because they've decided voter fraud is good for them. In blue states and purple states, they're not going to change their laws to stop voter fraud.
Here's the good news.
Historically, voter fraud typically only matters at the margins.
It matters in a close election.
So the answer is, in those blue states and purple states, we got to win by a big enough margin. They can't steal the race from us. Now that's not fair, it's frustrating, But the alternative is give up on our country. And I got to tell you there are a lot of Democrats that a lot of people of the corporate media that want all of us to give up on our country. They want conservatives to say, well, voter fraud is still there, so I'm not.
Going to vote to hell with it. And I'll tell you what.
If we do that, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Then our country truly is lost. And I'll point as a moment of encouragement, look no further than the state of Virginia. Virginia went for Joe Biden by ten points. Virginia has been blue for the past decade. Biden won Virginia by ten points. One year later, in twenty twenty one, Glenn who's a good friend of mine, I campaign with Glenn Youngkin all over Virginia. Spent two days barnstorming the
state of Virginia with Glenn. One year after Biden was elected, Glen Youngkin was elected as a Republican in Virginia. Now, Virginia had not changed a single voter integrity law. They had the same lousy election laws they had the year before. But a whole bunch of moms, moms who had voted for Joe Biden, got ticked off at what the schools were doing to our kids, and they flipped over and voted Republican. That gives us a roadmap to what we can and I think what we have to do in this next election.
Senator, It's always a pleasure to see people in person. I love doing these vertic lives for that don't forget. We do this show three days a week Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. We have our best of recap on Saturdays. Makes you subscribe and those days in between down with my podcast. Have Ben Ferguson podcasts as well, if.
You update on the biggest news.
I want to give a big thank you to all of you that are here, Senator.
I know it's a pleasure.
I know you wish you're here, not being held hosted in DC, but give Center Cruz a big round applause.
You guys are awesome.
And hopefully next year we'll be back in person here.
Thank you guys so much. God blessed and we'll see you again soon.
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