Welcome in as Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and we've got a pack show for you, including predictions that we made in the last show that are spot on, and if you could be king for a day. I've got something I want to make that we should just banon politics.
We'll deal with that a little bit later, but we have big news.
It looks like Republicans are actually going to stand up and win on a big issue in the Senate.
Center fill us in.
Well, let's say, first of all, Monday's Pod, we made a prediction. We made a prediction that number one Eric Swalwell would resign from Congress and number two Tony Gonzalez, a Republican, would resign from Congress as well. It is Tuesday night, it is twelve twenty two in the morning, and both of them are gone. Both of them have resigned. Both are in scandals. Look, Gonzalez's scandal was really ugly. It was not pretty. He had an affair with staffer. Tragically, the staffer took.
Her own life. She literally poured gasoline on herself and lit herself on fire. She was the mom of an eight year old child. It was horrific, and so his stepping down it is not a surprise to anyone that needed to happen. And then Swallwell.
Swalwell almost like pushed Gonzales aside, said, hold my beer, I can be more slimy, I could be more nasty than you. At this point than the number of women who have worked for him who've come out and accused him of sexually harassing them, sexually assaulting them, raping them, the number keeps spiraling, and so it is fairly amazing. A few days ago, Eric Swalwell was the leading candidate to be the next governor of California. He is now unemployed and I think there's a good likelihood he'll be
facing criminal prosecution. So wow, the world can change, and it turns out if you're a dirt bag, it can change really really fast. That prediction we told you about on Monday, we were accurate. And look, part of what we laid out is the hesitancy Democrats. A day ago, we're calling on Swallwell to suspend as a good manatorial campaign, but they were not calling on him to leave Congress. And that's because the balance of power in Congress is
exceptionally close. I think part of why this happened today is Gonzales stepped down as well, so you had one Republican one Democrat, both stepped down, so it didn't alter the balance of power. And I believe every one of the members of Congress is glad they did so that was the right decision.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
We've also got a big deal that's going to be happening, it looks like with Republican leadership, and I want to talk about what that looks like. But before we get to that, I want to tell you about our dear friends a Compassion International. I want to be honest with you for a second about how an act of compassion really feels. A couple of years ago, I made the choice to partner with an amazing organization called Compassion International. Why because I wanted to sponsor a child in need.
It was a nice idea, sure, but I had no idea just how much that simple act would change my life as well. I sponsored Nadia and got to watch your life change right in front of my eyes, going from starving literally alone on the streets, to getting the healthcare and education she needs to reach her God given full potential. I got to be a part of that change. And the light of that compassion not only illuminates in her, it illuminates now in me. That is the power of compassion.
The light of Christ shines on all of us. Feel it for yourself and change literally a child's life, change the world, and you also change yourself. You can sponsor child today. Visit compassion dot com. That's compassion dot com. All right, senator, So you're there in DC. It's basically just list.
Round numbers here about one in the morning.
John Thune seemed too as I was it was described to me earlier, got some cojones and said he's had enough and and by golly, we're going to fight now, and we're gonna get funding that we needed. It's gonna be done through reconciliation, is what it's looking like. Can you explain what has been being said behind the scenes, how we finally got to this point, and now what actually happens moving forward?
Well, Ben, I want to start by saying, you said it's about one in the morning. I said, literally three minutes ago that it was twelve twenty two in the morning.
I said, rounding.
I said, round, o, kid, that's not how you round you round down to twelve.
I'm just saying that.
Round up here. I was giving you more credit. Your dedication to the show at a sounds better.
And you're in Texas, so it's barely eleven o'clock in Texas.
Barely eleven twenty five if we're going to get right at it right, so it's time for you.
This is a podcast that's going to insist on truth and advertising.
It's going to insist on accuracy. So it is now what times now twelve.
I love that he gets off the mic to get his phone to make sure that he knows my.
Phone is down there. I got to see what time it is.
So those glasses and those here and aids, we just got to get him for your next birthday.
But keep going. I'm ready, all.
Right, you know man, I'm tempted to hold up a finger foot to you, and it's not the thumb.
It's not the thumb, and we're gonna save that for later in the show. We're gonna save that for later in the show.
I was trying to give you a segue there make your day.
So I'll give this segue before the show started today. We'll just pull back the curtain. I said, I would like to see a poll that is done on how untrustworthy people think politicians are both sides out if in every picture you take, you're doing the thumbs up post, like, maybe it's just me because I see more political pictures than than average Americans, but I despise all of them. I find a picture of me with a thumbs up like, you will not find that on the internet anywhere. I'm
not gonna do that pose. I don't care who's standing next to me. And I think you would trust Americans more as you described it with a middle finger than you would like a politician with a thumbs up picture.
So if I was king for a day, I would ban it.
So I will confess, Ben, I.
You've done the thumbs up picture. I googled it. Yeah.
I don't do a lot of it.
And the most common place I do a thumbs up picture is if I'm taking a picture with Aggie's. So Aggie's will do a gigam and that's that's the symbol for Texas A and M, and I'll do a hook them for longhorns as well.
So I my guess is neither of those.
Just for the record, you.
Know that's that's okay, you came to Texas, but it took you a while.
That's true.
That's true.
And so.
My guess is eighty percent of the pictures that are thumbs up that I've done have been with Aggie's and then there's been a handful where someone really occasionally someone was like, hey, will you do a thumbs up?
And I'm like, all right, fine, like if you really want to.
But that is not my thumbs up.
But I will tell you an interesting.
By the way, do you know I feel about this not really In the first Trump administration, when I was in the Oval, somebody said, are you going to do the thumbs up? I was like, I will not. I will not do the thumbs up. And if you look at the picture that they sent, I did not do a thumbs up.
I smiled. I did not do this.
I'd do the thumbs up very rarely. But I will
tell you a funny story about thumbs up. So it is like six seven years ago, I was down at the border, and I was at a border patrol checkpoint at our southern border where there were a bunch of eighteen wheelers crossing from Mexico over to the United States over to Texas, and I was just standing at the checkpoint, and I got to say, if you're a truck driver and you're driving across the border, there are a lot of things you may be expecting to see at the
border patrol checkpoint, but the US senator from Texas is.
Not one of them.
Yeah, it's not on the list.
Yeah, And so the looks of startled shock from every truck driver. It was really quite amusing because I stood there probably an hour or so and like geted every truck driver, and I took an informal survey. So a number of the truck drivers gave me a thumbs up and the remaining one gave me a middle finger. Yeah yeah, And it was I gotta say, I actually felt pretty good about the truck driver survey because I think it was about eighty twenty, so about eighty percent got the
thumbs up and about twenty percent flipped me off. And I was like, all right, I'll take those odds. Like, truck drivers are my peeps.
The rod number.
That's the Republican Party has become a blue collar party, like truck drivers, steel workers, construction workers, cops, firefighters, waiters and waitresses. That's our base. But it was still a fun because it literally was. It's amazing. Almost every truck driver it was one of two fingers, and I got it. You know, I don't remember how much, but it felt like close to one hundred percent that they would give me one finger or the other.
You know what.
That's good odds there By the way, on Saturday, I worked out, I did get a middle finger in the gym from a liberal. And I mean, I'm I'm sitting there and I have my headphones in and I'm listening to music and this guy just you just you could just tell he just was wanting to talk and he just decided he'd had enough and he just he just put it right out there.
And I was like, all right, well, I'm going to go back to lifting weights now.
Okay.
But that was a random dude. And it wasn't like Anna who was pissed at you.
No, it was not that at all.
No, it was just a random liberal who, if he's listened to the show like that was probably the highlight of his whole year. And I'm glad he had that moment. I'm glad I could facilitate that for him.
All Right.
I feel confident we don't have a lot of random liberals listen to this podcast. We have reporters because when I walk on Capitol Hill and people ask me questions, I'll say, oh, I just addressed that in the podcast.
Why don't you listen to the podcast?
And then they go listen to the podcast and they write stories and like break news because we break news. All right, let's talk reconciliation because we're actually going to talk about real and hard news. So Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for two months. Yep, the Democrats do not care. So understand, for two months, Coast guardsmen have not been paid, Secret Service agents have not
been paid. FEMA has not been paid. Department of Homeland Security, the people that are fighting cyber terrorism, the people that are fighting bioterrorism, they have not been paid. About two hundred thousand federal employees have not been paid for two months. And the sad reality is not a Democrat I believe cares And a big part of the reason they don't care is the media is not holding them accountable, so
they're having no consequence. So Brian Schotz, who is Democrat senator from Hawaii, he's widely viewed as the Democrat leader in waiting after Chuck Schumer. He said about a month ago, he said, Democrats are serene during the shutdowns, the longest shutdown in American history. About six weeks ago, I stood up to my colleagues in the Senate and I said the Republicans, and I said, look, the Democrats are wildly unreasonable.
It is bizarre.
But I think where Democrats are right now is I think they will never ever ever vote again to fund Ice. Their base just hates Ice, and this is an open border's, pro violent criminal party, and I think from their perspective, they will vote against funding ICE forever, and they're perfectly happy to shut down all of DHS to do it.
Now.
The irony is DHS is defunded. You know what is funded Ice?
Ice. So when we took Plaine.
That quickly ToView the man missed those episodes.
When we passed the Reconciliation Bill last summer, the working Family's tax cut, we funded ICE, and we funded customs and border patrol for the next three years because we knew Democrats were getting unreasonable. And so the rest of DHS is shut down, but ICE is alive, and it is literally the case that Democrats are voting to cut off funding for Coast Guarden, FEMA and Secret Service and all the rest because they're mad at ICE and ice get is fully funded. That being said, here's what I
said six weeks ago to my colleagues. I said, listen, this is where Democrats are. It is wildly unreasonable, it is indefensible, but it's where they are. So here's the approach forward. There were some Republican senators. They're saying, oh, let's do nothing. The pressure will build on Democrats and eventually they'll cave. And I said, you know what, they will never cave. They will leave DHS shut down for
the entire year. And part of it is if the media were functional and real, they wouldn't because they'd feel heat. But nobody in the media is blaming them. And by the way, the standard media trick is they blame both parties. Oh, Congress is broken. That's how they give cover to the Democrats. To be clear, I have voted sixteen times in the last two months to fund DHS. Democrats have voted sixteen times to defund DHS. It's not both parties. The people
who are voting to fund it are not responsible. In the way that the people are voting to defund it are The reason DHS is shut down is it takes sixty votes. We only have fifty three Republicans, which means the Democrats can shut it down and they're doing so. Now what I urge is, I said, you know what, let's pass a bill that funds DHS, and if the Democrats are so unreasonable they will not fund ICE and CBP, let's exclude them. Let's fund everything else. That's what the
Senate did two weeks ago. It then went to the House and I got to say, House Republicans, they kind of lost their minds and they began screaming, We're not going to defund ICE. Now that claim was always false because ICE is fully funded. ICE is funded through the Reconciliation Bill. But I understand the sort of shock because the position of the Democrats is so wildly unreasonable that
House Republicans were pissed. But the consequence they voted down the Senate bill and it meant DHS stay shut down. And I just think House Republicans had not gotten to the point where they have accepted, where they've internalized these are the crazy ass Democrats of the Senate we're dealing with and they're never ever ever going to fund ICE again. So here's what I suggested. Fund all of dhs except ICE and CVP, and then immediately take up a budget reconciliation.
Budget reconciliation cannot be filibustered. The Democrats cannot block it. We can pass it with just fifty Republicans in the Senate, and we should fully fund ICE.
And I will tell you today.
So every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, when the Senate is in session, Senate Republicans have lunch together. So today Tuesday, we had lunch and we had.
Let me ask you a question.
When you say you guys have lunch, is it working groups at tables or is there like a big speaker?
How does the lunch actually work? So people understand.
So there are two rooms that you have lunch in in the Senate. One is the LBJ room. That's a smaller room, it's just off the Senate floor. The minority gets the LBJ room, and then the bigger room is the Michael Mansfield Room, named after Montana Senator Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield, and it's a larger room. So whoever's in the majority gets the man's fe old room, so.
I know, for personal reasons, what do you eat there?
So there's actually different.
Centers that do it. How's that like? Is there a host?
So Tuesday and Wednesday there is Senate catering and there's like a catering office in the Senate that brings in food. It ferries like today we had some beef and some chicken and broccoli and green beans. I mean, catering is actually pretty good. I mean one of the things that I'm surprised, just like the food they provide at the Senate lunches is surprisingly decent. And those are Senate employees that do the catering on the Capitol and so events there.
They provide catering for any meal and we have dinners and lunches and things that are on the Capitol. So Tuesday and Wednesday the Senate Catering provides that, and then Thursdays. The way it works among Republicans is it rotates among different senators who hosts. So typically like I host about once a year, and when you host, you usually fly in food from your home state. So for example, when
I host, I fly in food from Texas. It's typically either barbecue or Mexican or the two things that I've done.
I've done. I usually do barbecue.
I sometimes do Mexican, so I'll fly in either you know, different barbecue places in Texas where we'll'll fly the food in. And then what actually happens when you host is you send a gift bag to your other senators. And the gift bag is usually a collection of stuff from your state. So I'll usually pick up some stuff like some you know, HB tortilla chips and salsa and you know, kind of different and you kind of put a gift bag together
that I don't know. It's about one hundred bucks worth of different stuff from the state that you collect and you send it. Oddly enough, senators send a lot of booze to each other, so I actually have I have a whole shelf in my office filled with booze that senators have sent me. And I don't drink the booze very much, so it just sits there. It collects faster than I drink it. But you have varying senators that will send like the Kentucky senators will usually send it.
Burban around to win that ball game, right, And then I'm assuming Texas jo like, here's some Tito's.
I've done Tito's. I've done Schiner back is what I usually send. I'll off and send a six pack of schiner Bach. I have done Tito's in the past. Those those have been the two that are kind of you pick a collection of stuff that sort of reflects your state. And so today we had and the Tuesday lunch is the leadership lunch, so leadership runs it. The Wednesday lunch is the steering lunch. Steering are the more conservative senators.
Rick Scott is right now the chairman of Steering. There's about a dozen of us that are on the Executive Committee of Steering. I'm on the Executive Committee. They are by design the most conservative senators. So the Wednesday lunch tends to be more policy driven. But we typically meet from about twelve thirty to two, so it's anywhere from an hour to hour and a half. A lot of people get there about one, so it's typically one to two.
Sometimes it's twelve thirty or too. But you have a good hour of robust discussion and it's not it's not a bunch.
Of say it room where someone has a four and is talking then someone else.
So it lunch.
It's not like you're sitting there hanging out with your buddies and then for fifteen minutes someone speaks.
It's the floor. It's actually a real working lunch.
It is a working lunch, and actually a lot of work gets done. And so I try to make the lunch every day because you have real debates and discussions with your colleagues. And so today we had this was the leadership lunch today, and so you had a presentation from John Thune and from Lindsey Graham about the plan. And the plan is to take up a reconciliation bill,
which is what I proposed six weeks ago. They are planning right now to fund DHS and ICE for three and a half years through fiscal year twenty twenty nine. And they want to keep the bill very narrowly limited to just ICE and CBP, And so I stood up.
I actually talked at.
Length today and I made a pretty vigorous argument. I said, listen, this is a no brainer. We need to do it. It's the right thing to do. Absolutely all of us agree with us. But I said, I think we're making three very serious mistakes. Number one, I think the proposal to fund icen CBP for three and a half years is a mistake.
We should enough.
Yes, we should fund them for ten years. Ten years is the limit under the statute for how long you can fund anything under budget reconciliation. And I said, the Democrats are going to vote against border security, against ICE and CBP for the foreseeable future. If that's the case, let's fund it for a decade. Let's take the opportunity we have right now to ensure that border security is funded for ten years.
I said.
Secondly, if we simply respond to the Democrats' legislative terrorism shutting down DHS by funding what we would have funded ordinarily, I think that's really dumb. What I have argued is we ought to increase the funding for ICE by ten percent, so that the consequence and this is it's a policy decision, but it's also a political decision. The consequence of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders shutting down the government for two
months and going nuts on border securities. Congratulations, Elizabeth, you just increased the funding for ICE by ten percent. That's just rather than beyond defense, let's go on offense and say, you know what, we are the Party of Border Security. We're going to fund it. And because you guys were wildly unreasonable, we had a bipartisan agreement on DHS funding until the Democrats backed out of it. So the consequence of your stupidity is you increase the funding of ICE.
I think that's a no brainer. I don't know if my colleagues will agree with either of those points, the ten years or increase in the work.
By the way, why would they not agree the ten years? And my cynical view is always I'm going to go there first. Is it because they'd want it to be an election your issue within the next ten years, or therefore they're saying, now, hey, let's fight on this in a couple of years.
Again, No, it's not that, it's it's.
Cynical politics has made me certain this want to be clear. Yeah, Like, look.
Immediately, I'm like, I could see something like I don't I don't want to. I like this issue I wanted to come up every couple of years. I can fight over it.
Yeah.
Look that there's a natural instinct of essentially playing small ball, and this is the outcome of negotiations between John Thune, Lindsey Graham, and the White House. And I think the White House is playing small ball too, and so I am urging the White House. Let's go ten years, let's up the budget. I've made this case to the White House. They're not there yet, and so they're focused on the challenge right in front of us rather than the challenge tomorrow.
But here's the big case.
That I made, and I leaned in really aggressively. I said, listen, we should do a reconciliation bill. We should fund ICE, do it for ten years. We should fund CVP, do it for ten years. We should up the budgets, but we shouldn't limit it to just those two. We should do a much broader reconciliation bill. In the case I made to my colleagues, I said, this, this is the last meaningful chance we will have to pass Republican priorities.
And there's a very real chance right now. It's substantially more likely than not that we will lose at least the House in November. We may lose the Senate to If that's right, then we have just the remainder of twenty twenty six to pass conservative victories, because starting next year, the House will be nothing but all impeachment and all investigations all the time, and so we will not be
able to pass conservative priorities. So my case to my colleagues was, we ought to take this up and use reconciliation, just like we did last year on the fourth of July where we passed the Working Families tax gut and had a massive number of conservative victories. We ought to do it again, and I suggested there are a lot of things we can do. So for example, I have a bill called Keep America Flying that says the Democrats will never again be able to shut down civilian air traffic.
So they won't be able to defund air traffic controllers, they won't be able to defund the TSA, they won't be able to defund the federal workers that are critical to keep planes in the air. By the way, September thirtieth budget funding is going to expire again right now, the Democrats are going to force another shutdown. One hundred percent. I will wager in some money right before the elections they will force a shutdown. I think we are idiots
to do nothing to prevent them. But the problem is a lot of folks in Congress just look an inch in front of their nose and they can't look ten inches in front of their nose. So if we're headed to a shutdown in September, we'd be morons not to do something to forestall it. So one of the things we can do is make sure that the four hour lines at airports, the people missing their flights for spring break, that doesn't happen again. We could pass funding that says
we're going to keep planes flying. Democrats no longer get to destroy your vacation or destroy your work trip just because they're mad. That I think makes a lot of sense. What I've verged is we had to do things that make sense for the economy. So, for example, an idea that I have been pushing hard is indexing capital gains to inflation. So the way it works, let's say ten years ago you bought a stock for one hundred dollars, and in the course of ten years, inflation has driven
the cost of that stock to two hundred dollars. Now, if that's all inflation, you don't have any meaningful gain. But if you sell that stock at two hundred dollars, you pay capital gains tax on the difference between one hundred dollars and two hundred dollars. And that's a phantom gain. And so what I believe is you ought to index capital gains to inflation, which means whatever the inflation is you base, you raise the basis, you raise the cost
of whatever it is you've invested. That would have a massive positive stimulus effect for the economy, and affordability is a huge issue for the voters. It has an enormous impact on housing. So here's what's in interesting. If you have a house. Let's say you bought a house and the house is appreciated massively in value, the same principle is true if you sell it. If the appreciation is due to inflation, you pay taxes on that. Yeah, and so what happens is a lot of people don't sell
their house when you die. If you pass your house onto your kids, the basis steps up, which means your kids take it not at the cost you paid, but whatever the cost is when they inherit it, so that capital gains tax disappears when you die. What it results in, particularly in high tax states, is people holding onto houses a really long time in not selling them.
Here's an amazing question.
Man, California, which has among the highest taxes in the country. Yes, what percent of hopes do you think are passed on it? Death and other words are held on too so long because the capital gains tax would be so high.
I'm not gonna I'm going to totally guess. I would say at least forty percent. Now I may be wrong, but I know people that they get they that's how they got their parents' house for the same reason you just described it.
So you are wrong. That's a little too aggressive. It's about twenty five percent. But twenty five.
Percent saying, by the way, because like in Texas, what is it three percent, four percent.
It's much lower. I don't know the Texas number, but it's much lower. And the consequence, Let's say you have a family that has a bunch of kids. They buy a big house and they raise their kids in it, and then their kids graduate, go off into the world, and you've just got an older, retired family. Now, many like an older required couple, doesn't need a big house with a bunch of bedrooms. In a normal world, they
would sell that house. They'd put it on the market and they'd buy like they'd buy a smaller little town home or condo. They'd buy something that is more appropriate to their stage in life, but especially in California and other high tax states, they don't do that because their tax bill would be huge. So the effect of this would be the lower the cost of housing for people that buying. What it means is a young married couple
that wants to buy that first house. If there were more houses on the market, it would drive the prices down and they could afford it more. So that's an example of something we can do. I also suggested we could plus up the school choice provisions. We could plus up the Trump account provisions. There are lots of things. Ron Johnson is advocated for the Shutdown Fairness Act, which says that number one, when there's a shutdown, all essential
workers will be paid. Number Two, there's another bill that says we won't have shutdowns in the case that you don't have funding, you will continue at the prior levels, or maybe you'll ratchet down slightly. My point, look what I stood up to my colleagues and I said, listen, I am not today advocating for any one particular policy. And I told them the story. So back in twenty eighteen, we had a Republican House, a Republican Senate, we had
a Republican President Donald Trump. And in August of twenty eighteen, I gave a presentation to the Senate Republicans and it was a PowerPoint. It was about fifty pages long, and I called it Carpe DM Seize the Day. And I went through in the last hundred years what had happened every time the Democrats had had the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they pass fundamental transformations of
this country. They passed the New Deal, they passed the Great Society, they passed Obamacare and Dodd Frank like, when they have control, they push the pedal to the metal and they floor their socialist left wing plans. Republicans, we are piddly. We don't do nearly as much. We did the working Family's tax cut. That was a big, big victory, but we haven't done a whole lot since then. And the case I made in twenty eighteen is I said we ought to take up another reconciliation. It was the
vehicle for the biggest legislative victories we have. And I had a chart that I put together of like fifty bills that different Republican senators had introduced, and I said, listen, I'm not being crazy. I'm not saying we should pass all fifty of these. I'm saying, let's pick five. My case was not we should do something specific. My case
was simply, we should do something. And I turned to my colleagues, I said that what I said it in twenty eighteen, I talked in particular the class of twenty fourteen. There was a big class. Nine new senators Republicans were elected in twenty fourteen, and I said, listen, you guys, if we don't take this opportunity, we had one hundred and eighty three days left in the Congress, this may be the last opportunity you ever get to pass.
Meaning meaningful legislation.
If we lose the House, you're done, no more legislation, forget about it. If that's the case, don't we have an urgency to do something? And as I look back at my entire tenure in the Senate, the most indefensible legislative decision was Mitch McConnell's decision in twenty eighteen not to take up another reconciliation.
And I fear that we're repeating them.
And by the way, so look for the last couple of months, I have been searching around for how do we do another reconciliation. I've been making this case for a while, but I've said, what we need is a tent pole. What do I mean by a tentpole. I mean an idea that is big enough, that is bold enough, that is important enough that it will unify fifty Republicans in the Senate and two it or eighteen.
Republicans in the House. Because we have really narrow majority.
So you've got to have something big enough that everyone gets behind, and then you could have other provisions carry along if you have a tentpole. In my view, ICE and CBP are the tentpole. There is not a Republican. I don't care if you're the most rock rip conservative or completely squishy mod No Republican wants to vote against funding ICE and CBP. That is a tent pole that can carry the rest of it. And so that's the
case I'm making to my colleagues right now. The White House is not on board, and my intention is I'm going to make this case to President Trump directly. I have not done so yet. Today was the beginning of it, making it to my colleagues in the Senate. But I think this is a decision do we swing for the fences and get victories, economic victories that we can campaign on and win elections in November, or do we play
small ball? And by the way, one of the things that leadership is saying is no, no, we'll do another reconciliation after this. Well, you know what, the next reconciliation will fail because without a tent poll, without something like iceon CBP, you ain't getting fifty and you ain't getting to eighteen because the Republicans will scatter on all sorts of different grounds. So you've got to have something big enough to bring them together and then we can win
real victories. That's the case I'm trying to make to my colleagues.
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting how this plays out. And you're right, I think Americans are like, what are you doing for me right now? I wish all the Republicans would understand that and be bold like you described it.
We'll see if that happens.
Otherwise some of your colleagues may not be your colleagues after the election this coming November.
And Ben, by the way, one of the things that I'm also urging my colleagues to include is election integrity, to include as much of the Save America Act as we can now. Now it is limited because of reconciliation. There are rules under statute as to what you can include in reconciliation. It has to be budgetary and not policy. And so how you get you can't get the full Save America Act in reconciliation, but you can get election
integrity provisions. You can, for example, condition federal grants, for example, the Help America Vote Act grants, which are grants that go to help fund elections. You can condition those on election integrity. You can condition those. You can take those away from sanctuary cities. So I'm arguing we ought to be using like, let's take this opportunity to pass legislation that Republicans agree with. Let's win victories. Let's not give up the chance to win victories.
Yeah, great point.
We're gonna keep covering it and we'll keep you up to day on what's happening in Washington, d C. Don't forget the show. We do on YouTube as well, so you can watch on YouTube. You can also download it as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and a weekend review on Saturdays as well for what you may have missed during the week and the Cina and I will see you back here on Friday morning.